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Those who work also have to live somewhere.

This simple statement could trigger a construction boom, but it is still doubtful whether it will come that way.

The consulting company RWI Consult, which belongs to the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research in Essen, has calculated the housing needs in Germany up to 2035 in a study.

In contrast to previous forecasts, which mainly took account of demographic development, the Essen researchers have also taken into account future immigration as a result of demographic development.

According to this, between 223,000 and 297,000 additional apartments will be required annually over the next 14 years to accommodate the forecast influx of skilled workers from abroad.

The Pestel Institute from Hanover has calculated an annual requirement of 400,000 new apartments for the period up to 2025.

The federal government has set itself the goal of more than 350,000 apartments.

In fact, the construction industry created around 300,000 new apartments last year - the highest annual output in two decades.

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The Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research (BBSR) calculated a new building requirement for the entire federal territory from 2015 to 2030 of 230,000 residential units per year.

The same thing or more must be added to cover the actual housing needs.

Source: WORLD infographic

Because in addition there would be the effects of the labor market, aging and the associated exits from the labor market and the consequent increasing demand for immigration in the coming decade, according to RWI Consult.

So around half a million apartments per year could be needed - calculated conservatively.

Be attractive to qualified specialists

“The companies are likely to increase their efforts to compensate for the unsatisfied demand for workers in the future through increased immigration,” write the authors of the study headed by Christoph M. Schmidt, President of the RWI Leibniz Institute.

The study was carried out on behalf of Fakt AG, an investment company specializing in real estate.

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Creating the conditions for this and, above all, being attractive for the immigration of qualified skilled workers will become a central competitive factor for individual economic areas and regions as well as for Germany as a whole.

"An important component will be the question of affordable and livable living space," says Schmidt.

Depending on the assumed immigration intensity, demographic change would result in three to four million fewer people in work in 2035 than today.

It is to be expected that - as has often been observed in the past - the unsatisfied demand for labor on site will lead to adjustments in the remuneration of the then scarcer production factor labor, which will lead to a decline in the demand for labor.

“In particular, due to these bottlenecks, companies will probably increasingly use the new technological possibilities associated with the keywords 'digitization' and 'artificial intelligence' to change their performance processes,” the authors of the study write.

"Highly qualified employees are likely to gain even more appreciation, while low and medium qualifications will come under pressure."

"Existential question for our national economy"

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In addition to the natural demographic shifts, other trends would influence the labor market: For example, the participation of women in the labor force is increasing and there is a decreasing tendency to leave the labor market prematurely.

In addition, Germany has been a net immigration country for a long time, so that some of the economically active people are being replaced.

In view of the need for immigration of up to 300,000 employees, which is not yet taken into account in today's migration assumptions, the need for living space would also increase significantly, according to the RWI study.

“After all, the baby boomers will leave the labor market, but not the housing market.” It follows that if the German labor market could successfully attract a large number of foreign workers, there would be a considerable increase in demand in housing construction.

The real estate service provider JLL also expects an increase in the number of households and thus apartments by 2035. The number of households can grow simply through the decline in the average household size, even if the population is declining overall.

"Housing construction is becoming an existential question for our economy," says Hubert Schulte-Kemper, CEO of Fakt AG.

Up to ten million workers from Europe could be needed in the next ten to twelve years.

And if you assume that the average family that comes to Germany then consists of three to four people, then the number of inhabitants in our country should increase to well over 100 million.

Schulte-Kemper: “That means nothing else than that the economy is once again making a significant jolt forward due to the increasing number of residents.

And that also means that the demographic factor, which is said to be so catastrophic for the relationship between employees and retirees, is finally being thrown into the moth box. "

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