BERLIN, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Germany's population grew by 147,000 or 0.2 percent to 83.2 million in 2019, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Friday.
Since 2011, the population in Germany had "continuously increased," Destatis noted. However, the annual increase had slowed down since the record growth of 1.2 percent in 2015 when immigration to Germany hit a peak.
Although the population growth fell to more or less the level of 2012, last year's increase was mainly due to the fact that about 300,000 more people immigrated to Germany than emigrated.
The German economy is heavily dependent on international workers to fill vacancies. Germany recently introduced a skilled worker immigration law to facilitate immigration to Germany of qualified skilled workers from countries outside the EU.
Last year, the migration surplus had decreased compared to 2018 when Germany still recorded a plus of 400,000 persons, according to Destatis.
At the same time, the number of deaths continued to exceed the number of births in Germany by 161,000. In the long term, Destatis still expects Germany's population to shrink to around 78 million by 2060. Enditem
