Germany’s new coalition government wants to attract 400,000 qualified workers from abroad each year to tackle both a demographic imbalance and labor shortages in key sectors that risk undermining the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

After decades of low birth rates and uneven migration, a shrinking labor force also poses a demographic time bomb for Germany’s public pension system, in which fewer employees are burdened with the task of financing the pensions of a growing mass of retirees who are enjoying longer life expectancy.