In recent years, an increasing number of physicians in Germany have come from abroad, particularly in the fields of human and dental medicine. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), 13 % of all doctors in 2024-about 64,000 practitioners-did not hold German citizenship. A decade earlier this figure was 7 %, or 30,000 doctors. By comparison, the proportion of all working adults with a foreign nationality rose from 9 % in 2014 to 15 % in 2024. Among foreign‑based doctors, nearly half (49 %) were younger than 35 years, whereas just 18 % of German‑national doctors fell into that age group.
The influx of overseas‑trained doctors is further illustrated when the migration history of the workforce is examined. In 2024, 121,000 doctors in the human and dental fields had migrated from abroad, representing roughly 24 % of all physicians. Many of these migrants have since acquired German citizenship, as the citizenship figures reveal. Of the foreign‑trained doctors, 51,000 (42 %) had lived in Germany for less than ten years. Destatis does not clarify whether these doctors had completed their medical education entirely overseas.
Besides the domestic medical degree and the German licensing exam, foreign qualifications can be recognized with full equivalence. In 2024 doctors were the second most common group receiving such recognition after nursing staff, with about 7,000 foreign certificates deemed fully equivalent in Germany. Among them, 21 %-roughly 1,400-were German nationals, followed by 11 % (about 800) Syrians. In dentistry, foreign recognitions ranked seventh among professions, with nearly 700 foreign dental qualifications granted equivalence. German dentists represented 46 % (around 300) of the recognitions, Syrians followed with 12 % (roughly 100).
These data suggest that many German medical students opt to study abroad to bypass competitive entry requirements. In 2023, about 2,600 German students pursued human medicine in Austria, while in Hungary the number for 2024 neared 1,900. For dentistry, Austria attracted 500 German students and Hungary 300.
The number of new entrants into medical studies in Germany’s first semester has steadily increased in recent years. For the winter semester 2024/2025, 15,900 students began human‑medicine studies, 30 % more than in 2014/2015, when the cohort was 12,200. In contrast, the intake for dentistry remained almost unchanged; the 2024/2025 figure of just under 2,000 students was only 1 % higher than the 2014/2015 level. Across all disciplines, new first‑semester entrants fell by 3 % to 651,000 in 2024/2025.
Age distribution among physicians shows that a sizable segment will retire in coming years. In 2024, 31 % of doctors in human and dental medicine were 55 years or older-a slightly higher proportion than that among all workers (27 %). The total number of physicians in these fields rose by 21 % from a decade ago, reaching 497,000 in 2024. The share of the 55‑plus group increased from 29 % to 31 %, while the 35‑54 age band shrank from 52 % to 47 %. The proportion of doctors under 35 grew modestly from 19 % to 22 %, a change helped by the large fraction of foreign doctors-nearly half of whom were under 35 in 2024.
Over the past decade, doctors’ working hours have fallen more sharply than those of the general workforce, largely due to a rise in part‑time employment. In 2014, 15 % of physicians worked part‑time; this rose to 28 % in 2024. For all workers, the part‑time share increased from 28 % to 31 % during the same period.
Despite the decline, physicians still work longer than the average employee. In 2024 the average full‑time physician worked 49.7 hours per week, fully part‑time 25.6 hours-well above the overall averages of 46.0 and 20.9 hours, respectively. The average annual workload for all workers was 34.4 hours per week, versus 40.3 hours per week for physicians-a difference of about six hours.
Within human and dental medicine, working hours vary considerably by specialty. Surgeons, for instance, clocked an average of 49.7 hours per week in full‑time positions, roughly six and a half hours more than dentists and orthodontists, whose full‑time average was 43.1 hours.
