The Demand for High-skilled Workers and Immigration Policy

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the demand for high-skilled workers using a new firm data set, the IZA International Employer Survey 2000. Our results suggest that while workers from EU-countries are mainly complements to domestic high-skilled workers, workers from non-EU countries are hired because of a shortage of high-skilled labour. The paper, furthermore, provides a short description of recent German policy initiatives regarding the temporary immigration of high-skilled labour. In view of our descriptive results these temporary immigration policies seem, however, to satisfy only partly the demand of firms interested in recruiting foreign high-skilled workers. A more comprehensive immigration policy covering also the permanent immigration of high-skilled workers appears to be necessary.