"They fire, we hire," said Rainer Zugehoer, Chief People Officer at Cariad, the software subsidiary of automaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE). Spooked by inflation and the prospect of recession, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Facebook owner Meta (META.O) have announced a combined almost 40,000 job cuts. Germany, with one of the world's oldest populations, has gaping holes in its labour force: according to IT industry group Bitkom, 137,000 IT jobs are unfilled. Gerlach added, adding Munich's famed beer festival to the strong labour protections that might prove attractive to the newly jobless. "Bureaucracy in Germany is utterly crippling for most highly-qualified workers when they first encounter it, especially if they don't speak German," said Diana Stoleru of Berlin startup Lendis.

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