If the question is....can Germany go and allow shrinkage of the population from the present 81-million to 68-million....the answer is no. Between industry issues, their pension program, and manpower for various jobs, they can’t make this type of decrease without major issues.
Just on nurses right now, there’s a national problem. They are to the point of recruiting nurses from the Philippines and putting them through a training program and later a year of German language, and then offering them long-term jobs in Germany.
They reported two months ago that in the state-region around Berlin....they had an urgent need for around 800 new and additional teachers, and they weren’t getting enough applicants for the open positions.
Here where I live....they have issues in finding enough bus drivers....so they’ve contracted out some Czech guys who come in for six months at a time while they try to keep recruiting locally for folks who will take just plain bus driver jobs.
I know part of the problem here in USA is that lot of parents do not make their kids work in high school and during college anymore. There is a national shortage of folks to work in restaurants, hotels, housekeeping, cooks, servers, dishwashers,etc.
When we go on vacation to like Maine, Outerbanks, hotels and restaurants can’t even open because of shortage. They are forced to hire folks from Europe like Poland, Bulgaria, etc. We had two waiters from Bulgaria at restaurants when we ate dinner.
It’s just sad how kids are coddled now a days. I have a good friend who’s soon is a junior in college,, never got his drivers license, she shuttled him around everywhere until this year as he has moved on campus. He never worked a day in his life. But he did spend every night playing video games.
The pension program is the real problem - promising the output of future generations to the current ones. If it weren’t for such programs a nation could still enjoy decent per capita income even in the face of declining GNP if the population is declining concomitantly. Sadly, socialists need an ever growing population. Others do not.