Ukrainians are the second largest foreign population in Germany after immigrants from Turkey.
A record annual increase of 1,120,000 inhabitants was set by the German statistical office in 2022. The demographic indicator increased not so much due to the growth of the birth rate, but due to the increase in Ukrainian immigrants who fled the horrors of the war. This is the biggest annual jump since the reunification of the country (the fall of the Berlin Wall) more than three decades ago.
As in previous years, more people died in 2022 than were born. The excess of the number of deaths over births increased to 327 thousand.
According to Bloomberg Economics, Germany faces wider demographic gap (in terms of local population reproduction) than any of its Western counterparts in the next decade.
Without immigrants to make up for losses, pay taxes and work, Europe’s largest economy risks being left without the labor force it needs to spur growth.
Germany’s population growth of 1.3% to 84.4 million is driven by a sharp rise in net immigration to 1.46 million, up from 329,000 in 2021.
As expected, 915,000 of the total number of immigrants were Ukrainianswhich is the second largest foreign population in Germany after the Turks, who number 1.34 million.
The Statistical Office also noted that the number Ukrainian migrantswho sought asylum in Germany last year was only slightly lower than the highest number Germany received in 2015, at the height of the country’s latest migration crisis, which saw an influx of asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
According to the statistical office, two-thirds of refugees from Ukraine fled to Germany in the first three months after the Russian invasion, between March and May 2022.
Germany is among the countries that have received more Ukrainians than any other country in the European Union, with the exception of Poland.the second largest refugee flow after the end of World War II.
From the very beginning Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to support Ukraine “as much as necessary” and, together with other Western allies, sent aid and weapons to Kyiv.
According to a poll conducted at the end of 2022, the majority of Ukrainians who fled to Germany after the Russian invasion feel “comfortable” in the country, and about 37% would like to settle there permanently or for years to come.
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