Applying for an employment permit for persons with a residence permit

If you are in an ongoing asylum procedure, employment is only permitted if this is expressly stated in your residence permit. If you wish to work, you must therefore apply for an employment permit from the Foreigners' Registration Office.

The foreigners authority should allow an asylum seeker to take up employment (including training) after three months of residence if they are no longer obliged to live in an initial reception centre. The immigration authority can refuse permission in atypical circumstances. Criteria that are taken into account here are, for example, clarification of identity, involvement in the asylum procedure or criminal offences committed by the foreigner.

If the asylum seeker is still obliged to live in an initial reception centre and the asylum procedure has not been completed within six months, there is a right to be granted an employment permit under certain conditions.

In order to process your application, the foreigners authority usually involves the Federal Employment Agency, which checks the working conditions. After more than four years of uninterrupted residence in Germany, the Federal Employment Agency no longer needs to be involved.

If you would like to complete an in-company vocational training programme (dual training), you must apply individually for an employment permit for the specific training position. Vocational training at school does not require authorisation.

The employment permit is issued for the duration of the approval of the Federal Employment Agency, at the longest until the residence permit expires.

The following restrictions apply:

If you are from a so-called "safe country of origin", i.e. from a member state of the European Union, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Kosovo, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (North Macedonia), Montenegro, Senegal or Serbia, and have submitted your asylum application after 31 August 2015, you cannot obtain an employment permit during the asylum procedure. This also applies if you come from Georgia or the Republic of Moldova and have applied for asylum after 30 August 2023.

Even if the asylum procedure was rejected as manifestly unfounded or inadmissible and no suspensive effect was ordered by legal action, there is no access to the German labour market.