If you are tolerated in Germany, you are only permitted to work if this is expressly stated in your Duldung (certificate of suspension of deportation). If you want to work, you must therefore apply for a work permit at the Foreigners' Registration Office. This also applies to the exercise of in-company vocational training or an internship.

You can be granted a work permit if you have been allowed, tolerated or resided in Germany for three months with a residence permit and you have found an employer who would like to hire you.

Tolerated persons who are obliged to live in a reception centre only have access to the labour market after six months.

To process your application, the Foreigners' Registration Office usually involves the Federal Employment Agency, which checks the working conditions. After more than four years of uninterrupted stay in Germany, the Federal Employment Agency no longer has to be involved.

If you would like to complete in-company vocational training (dual training), the employment permit for the specific training place must be applied for individually. School-based vocational training does not require approval.

The employment permit is issued for the duration of your current toleration at the latest. This can be extended accordingly if the conditions are met when the toleration is extended.

The exercise of an economic activity is generally prohibited if:

• you have travelled to Germany in order to obtain benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act,
• your termination of residence cannot be carried out for reasons for which you are responsible or you have violated your obligations to cooperate in removing the obstacle to deportation (for example, insufficient cooperation in obtaining a passport or proof of identity, deception about identity or nationality),
• the Duldung was granted with the addition "Duldung für Personen mit unklarem Identität" (toleration for persons with an unclear identity), or

you come 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Macedonia), Montenegro, Senegal or Serbia and submitted an asylum application after 31 August 2015 that was rejected or withdrawn, unless the withdrawal was based on advice provided to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Even without an asylum application, people from safe countries of origin cannot obtain a work permit.