Said Hashimi is sweating. He has already spent two hours reorganizing the storage room next to the office, assembling metal cabinets and moving boxes in an out of the room.

The 18-year-old from Afghanistan has been in an apprenticeship program for about a year now to become a plumbing and heating installer with Heizung-Obermeier, a heating installation company located in Munich's historic city center. The work is never boring, he says. "I like my coworkers, and I often work on construction sites."

He completed a long journey to arrive where he is today.

Hashimi is the eldest of four children. His father died in the war in Afghanistan. When he was 15, Hashimi fled from Jalalabad in northeast Afghanistan and embarked on a five-month journey to Munich. He flew from Kabul to Tehran, and from there, he traveled on foot or by bus through Turkey, Greece and Italy before reaching Germany. Sometimes he was part of a group and sometimes he was alone. He completed a journey of more than 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles) -- without his family.

After arriving in Munich, he received assistance from the local youth welfare office. As a foreigner, it was difficult at first to find his bearings. "I couldn't understand anyone," says Hashimi, who now speaks German almost fluently. After graduating from lower secondary school with a high grade point average, he completed a traineeship as an auto painter, and then a second traineeship at Heizung-Obermeier, where he was given an important opportunity last year. "If he wants to, he can also complete the work here he needs to become a foreman," says business owner Olaf Zimmermann.

'All Skin Colors Are Welcome'

Two years ago, Zimmermann noticed that it was becoming more and more difficult to find skilled personnel. He already employed people from other countries at the time. "We've had employees from all over Europe. All skin colors are welcome," says Zimmermann. "The focus is on the work. Everything else is unimportant."

Zimmermann, who currently employs two immigrants, says that the problems he encounters are with the German bureaucracy. He doesn't know, for example, whether Hashimi will be allowed to stay in Germany once he completes his apprenticeship.

Hashimi is one of thousands of children who become stranded in Germany year after year, often sent by their parents, in the hope that they will find a better life, get a good education and be better prepared for the future. They numbered an estimated 5,000 in 2013, and more than 10,000 last year. Their numbers are rising, along with the overall figures for asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees. The German government is expecting up to 800,000 asylum-seekers this year alone.

The massive influx of foreigners creates immense challenges for society. Many local authorities are overwhelmed, and refugee hostels, temporary housing and tent cities are overcrowded. The social welfare system and government budgets are faced with billions in additional costs.

A Silver Lining for Germany?

But the influx also provides opportunities for the German economy. Despite the official unemployment figure of almost 2.8 million, the business community urgently needs workers. And every refugee or migrant who finds work becomes less of a drain on the public coffers. The German economy is dependent on immigration, both from Europe as well as people entering the country due to asylum rights in Germany. With the German population shrinking, businesses are unable to fill many jobs, and specialized workers are increasingly rare. This trend will only be exacerbated in the coming years. It's a development that jeopardizes the country's future prosperity.

The fact is that Germany has been a country of immigration since the mid-1960s, when the number of guest workers passed the 1-million mark. Nevertheless, the country still lacks a modern immigration law. Germany is, however, starting to recognize that it must avail itself of the skills of those already in the country. In recent months, the government has repeatedly amended ordinances and legal provisions to facilitate the integration of asylum-seekers and refugees into the labor market.

Nevertheless, it is often merely a coincidence when people like Jacob Sousani find work. In Damascus, the Syrian native had a hair salon, five employees, a 70-square-meter (750-square-foot) apartment, a car and social status.

All that remains of his former life is a back injury from a bomb attack.

Sousani fled from the Syrian civil war. His five-month odyssey took him through Lebanon, Turkey, Greece and Italy until he finally arrived in Dresden. His father and two of his brothers stayed in Damascus. Sousani doesn't want to talk about what happened to the rest of his siblings.

A Growing Labor Shortage

It is a busy Thursday evening in the small hair salon where he works today, Director's Cut in Dresden's trendy Neustadt neighborhood. A man with bushy, black eyebrows, he is standing at one of the hairdresser's chairs, meticulously applying blonde hair dye to a customer's roots. He has been working in the salon for more than a month and has lived in Germany for the last year. "It's a famous salon," says Sousani.

He found a new home, an apartment and work in Dresden. "I didn't think anyone would ever hire me," says Sousani. But the 31-year-old was lucky, when a neighbor, who is also from Syria, told owner Christoph Steinigen about Sousani. After a trial week, Steinigen offered him a job. Sousani now works 20 hours a week and attends a language school to learn German in the mornings. He answered 80 percent of the questions correctly in the last test he took there. "He's really good," says Steinigen. "My only criticism is that his cuts could be a little more modern."

The hairdressing business isn't the only industry with a shortage of qualified workers. There are currently close to 46 million people of working age in Germany, who are theoretically capable of working. Without immigration, that number will decline to less than 29 million in about 30 years. Even if the retirement age were raised to 70 and the number of women and men in the workforce were equal, the total workforce would only increase by 4.4 million people.

A smaller workforce translates into fewer people paying into the pension fund and health insurance systems, fewer people consuming and producing goods, and fewer people paying taxes to pay for expenses like schools and road construction. Fewer people also translates into a reduced potential for growth and less affluence.

Of course, in light of technological development and the digitization of life, it is difficult to predict future workforce requirements. Nevertheless, a study conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded, in every scenario it examined, that there is no getting around immigration. "If net immigration declines significantly, the aging of society will create intractable problems for the social security systems and the national budget," says Lutz Schneider of the Coburg University of Applied Sciences, who examined the consequences of immigration for the Bertelsmann Foundation.

The German Ailment

Germany will be unable to fulfill its needs through the European labor market, which allows the free movement of workers within the EU, alone. For now, most immigrants still come from European Union countries, and numbers have been especially high in recent years because of the EU's eastward expansion and the economic crisis in Southern Europe. But this situation will not continue forever.

"As the crisis-ridden countries see their economies recover, immigration from EU countries will decline in the medium term," says Schneider. In addition, all European countries are suffering from the German ailment, namely that their populations are shrinking and aging. Economist Schneider predicts that the average annual number of immigrants from EU countries will decline to 70,000 by 2050. "This is why we will be even more dependent on people from third countries immigrating to Germany for work in the future, people who now come to Germany primarily as refugees," says Schneider.

Germany needs more than just highly qualified academics. It also needs trained individuals with moderate to minimal qualifications. About a million jobs have been created for foreigners in the last four years in fields requiring no formal training: supporting staff in nursing care, restaurants and agriculture. The number of unfilled positions is constantly rising and was close to 600,000 in July.

The skilled trades have already started recruiting refugees and migrants. When Christoph Karmann is not sitting in his office in downtown Munich, he is visiting vocational schools, where he encounters young migrants with many questions. What can I do, they ask? What opportunities will I have? How does the vocational training system work in Germany?

As one of two so-called training canvassers with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria, Karmann places refugees and migrants in companies with training programs. Bavarian skilled manual labor enterprises are urgently in need of trainees and workers. This spring, the chamber of trade wrote to 7,000 businesses in Upper Bavaria to ask whether they would hire a refugee. In response, it received offers for 1,200 internship and traineeship positions.

To combat the shortage of skilled personnel, companies and trade associations are urging policymakers to at least better utilize the potential of refugees and migrants living in Germany. Daimler was the first major corporation to appeal to lawmakers to allow refugees to begin working after one month in the country.

"It's a waste of valuable time for asylum-seekers to be condemned to idleness during their asylum proceedings," says Ingo Kramer. The president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) says that rules should be changed so that asylum-seekers and migrants not threatened with immediate deportation are given faster access to the labor market.

'Early Intervention'

The Federal Employment Agency's "Early Intervention" model project, designed to integrate refugees and migrants into the labor market as early as possible, has been underway since the beginning of 2014. The goal of the project is to determine which additional competencies, tools and resources it needs to perform its work as effectively as possible. Talent scouts in 12 locations identify well-trained refugees and try to place them in businesses.

Hannegret Deppe is sitting in her office at the employment agency in Detmold in northwestern Germany near Bielefeld. Today she has two appointments with clients, as refugees are referred to at the agency. Branko Nastasic, whose name has been changed by the editors to protect his privacy, is from Serbia, where he managed a café and was also a construction worker.

Deppe walks Nastasic through a computer program, step by step. He knows how to install drywall, but not how to put in windows or do electrical work. Deppe uses the program to identify the right employer for her clients. She also assists refugees and migrants in applying for jobs, by helping them write letters to potential employers and prepare their resumes.