The number of foreign doctors working in Germany is rising steadily. According to figures released by the Federal Statistical Office (Statistisches Bundesamt) in Wiesbaden on Tuesday, a total of 64,000 physicians without German citizenship were practising in the country in 2024. That figure represents 13 percent of the entire medical workforce, or one in every eight doctors. A decade earlier, the share stood at just seven percent, with around 30,000 foreign doctors working in Germany, roughly half the current number.
When including those who have since obtained German citizenship, the picture is even broader. In total, 121,000 doctors who had immigrated to Germany from abroad were working in the fields of human medicine and dentistry in 2024, representing nearly a quarter, 24 percent, of the entire medical workforce. The lower figure of 64,000 reflects only those who have not yet acquired a German passport.
The medical profession ranks as the second most frequently recognised foreign qualification in Germany, after nursing. In 2024, just over 7,600 foreign qualifications in human medicine and dentistry were fully recognised in Germany. This figure also includes German medical students who completed their degrees abroad, in many cases to circumvent the highly competitive admission restrictions for medical studies in Germany itself.
In 2023, 2,600 German students were enrolled in human medicine programmes in Austria, and 1,900 in Hungary. The trend was similar in dentistry, where Austria attracted 500 German students studying abroad and Hungary 300.
Back home, the number of first-year students beginning a degree in human medicine in Germany rose by 30 percent over the past decade. In the winter semester of 2024/2025, a total of 15,900 young people started studying medicine, up from 12,200 ten years earlier. In dentistry, however, first-year enrolment has remained largely stable over the same period, with just under 2,000 new students beginning their studies in the winter semester of 2024/2025.
Despite the growth in new enrolments, Germany's medical workforce is ageing alongside the broader population. A large proportion of the country's doctors are expected to leave the profession in the coming years due to retirement. In 2024, nearly one in three physicians, 31 percent, were aged 55 or older.
At the same time, working hours among doctors have fallen more sharply over the past decade compared to the working population as a whole. A key driver of this trend is the significant increase in part-time work within the profession. While 15 percent of doctors worked part-time in 2014, that figure had nearly doubled to 28 percent by 2024. Despite this shift, doctors continue to work significantly longer hours than most other employed people in Germany. In 2024, physicians worked an average of 40.3 hours per week, around six hours more than the national average for all employed persons in the country.
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