Entrepreneurs with foreign roots will likely create 150,000 jobs in Germany this year, according to the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce (DIHK).
The Berliner Zeitung reported on Monday that the DIHK was seeing a growing number of people from immigrant families willing to start their own business in recent years.
The DIHK last year advised some 11,000 such entrepreneurs – up from 8,300 only two years earlier – meaning 18 percent of those prepared to create a new business had foreign roots.
DIHK President Hans Heinrich Driftmann told the paper immigrants were "making an important entrepreneurial contribution to Germany."
“We will need even more of this sort of economic impulse to overcome the demographic challenges of the future,” he said.
The paper reported that if Germany’s population continues to shrink, the country will have 700,000 fewer self-employed by 2050.
Though immigrants were particularly well-represented in retail and gastronomy, the DIHK said they were starting new enterprises in all important sectors of the German economy.
The Local Germany
