Number of young people in Germany at historic low

At the end of 2025, just 8,3 million people in Germany were aged between 15 and 24 years old, a historic low. How do the figures bode for the future?

Where are all the young people?

The number of young people in Germany aged 15 to 24 has been on a gradual decline since the mid-1980s, when they made up around 16,7 percent of the population. Today, they make up just 10 percent of the country’s 83 million people, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

The number is even lower if young people with a migration background (i.e., they or their family migrated to Germany since 1950) are not counted. Just 8,5 percent of Germany's population without a migration background is aged between 15 and 24. 

And young people are not equally distributed across Germany. Bremen has the highest percentage of young people (11 percent of the population), followed by Hamburg (10,5 percent) and Baden-Württemberg (10,4 percent). 

The four states with the lowest proportion of young people all lie in the former east: Thuringia (9,2 percent), Saxony-Anhalt (9,1 percent), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (9,1 percent) and Brandenburg (8,8 percent).

Former eastern states also have the lowest birth rates. In 2025, Germany's total fertility rate dropped to 1,32 children per woman, compared to 1,58 children per woman in 1976. In 2025, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (1,21 children), Thuringia (1,20 children) and Saxony (1,16 children) had the lowest birth rates across the 16 federal states.

“The population is declining faster than expected,” the German Economic Institute (IW) recently wrote in a press release. The institute initially forecast the population to grow to 85 million by 2040; now it is expected to shrink to 82 million. 

Germany will be short of 4,3 million workers by 2036

So what does the decline in birth rates and young people mean for the future? According to the IW, as the older generations retire, the federal republic will be short of around 4,3 million workers as early as 2036.

Previous calculations from the IW suggest that Germany’s economic growth rate will decline to 0,4 percent per year, and will hit 0 percent by 2029, unless more is done to encourage migration to plug worker shortages.