Germany: How Indians Outperform

Indian migrants in Germany earn significantly more money than the average population. While the median salary among full-time German employees at the end of 2023 was 3,945 euros per month, Indian-origin employees earned 5,359 euros.

A key reason is that immigrants from India have above-average qualifications. Many immigrants have studied STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and often work in well-paying sectors such as IT or as engineers.

Qualified immigration is particularly important for future-oriented professions in the technical and scientific fields. Employment in academic STEM professions rose by 41.7% among Germans between the end of 2012 and the end of 2023 — and by 215.7% among foreigners.

Indians are also the largest group here: The number of employees rose from 3,750 to 31,552 in the same period — which corresponds to an increase of 741%. In total, around 137,000 Indian nationals work in Germany — 94,000 of them full-time.

A third of Indians aged between 25 and 44 work in academic STEM professions. The figures are also above average among immigrants from China (25%), Brazil (21.8%), Russia (18.6%), Iran (17.8%) and France (16.2%).

Overall, the median gross salary of all full-time employees in Germany is 3,796 euros. At 3,945 euros, Germans earn around 900 euros more than people with foreign nationality — whose median salary is 3,034 euros.

At 5,359 euros per month, the average salary of Indians working in Germany is around 41% above the median wage and even 77% above that of all full-time foreign employees in Germany.

This is followed by employees from the United States (5,095 euros), Austria (5,083 euros), the UK and Ireland (5,010 euros), China (4,728 euros), Switzerland (4,589 euros) and Brazil (4,565 euros).

At the other end of the scale with comparatively low median wages are full-time employees from Bulgaria (2,520 euros), Romania (2,611 euros) and Syria (2,657 euros).

The development at German universities also shows that India has now become one of the most important immigration countries. While 9,372 Indians were studying in Germany in the winter semester of 2013, this figure had risen to 49,008 by the winter semester of 2023.

In 2024 alone, 20,000 visas for study purposes were issued to Indians. However, according to a survey conducted by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), only 40% of Indian students stated that they would “definitely” stay in Germany — compared to 26% who answered “rather yes.”