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. This also applies to vocational training or an internship.

If you have been permitted to stay in Germany for three months, are no longer obliged to live in an initial reception center for asylum seekers (also known as a reception center, arrival center or anchor center) and have already found an employer who would like to employ you, you may be permitted to work.

To process your application, the foreigners authority usually involves the Federal Employment Agency, which will check 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 company-based vocational training (dual training), the employment permit for the specific training position must be applied for individually. Vocational training at school does not require approval.

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:

You are generally prohibited from taking up gainful employment as long as you are obliged to live in an initial reception center. Only if your asylum procedure has not been completed within nine months can you be permitted to work.

If you are an asylum seeker 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 August 31, 2015, you cannot obtain a work permit during the asylum procedure.

Asylum seekers whose asylum procedure has been rejected as manifestly unfounded or inadmissible and whose appeal has not been granted suspensive effect also have no access to the German labor market.