6 ms·
German Unemployment Declines as Economy Poised for More Growth
- igl 9y agoLies. Merkels government just changed how the number is calculated. They created programs for unemployed (1 euro jobber, "Aufstocker") and removed them from the statistic. They still receive social support but are not "fully unemployed" http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/arbeitslose-statistik-100.html http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/arbeitslose-statistik-100.htm... (german) The growing income inequality tells the real story.
- denzil_correa 9y agoIf I understand this correctly, currently there are 7.3M "mini jobs" in Germany - 733,600 (2.4%) lesser than last year. 2.6M (approx. 36%) of these mini jobs are side jobs i.e. jobs taken to earn additional money (may include students as well). https://statistik.arbeitsagentur.de/Navigation/Statistik/Statistik-nach-Themen/Beschaeftigung/Beschaeftigung-Nav.html https://statistik.arbeitsagentur.de/Navigation/Statistik/Sta...
- dmix 9y agoThere was a study [1][2] which showed most of the job growth in recent years in the US has been via 'temporary' or part-time jobs. So the recovery that Obama took credit for using the blanket statistics such as 'unemployment rate' is heavily skewed towards people who compromised with jobs that were worse than the one they held before the crisis. As the study mentions, this was heavily influenced by the effects of the 'gig economy' via tech companies which created a larger percentage of contractor jobs. Instead of pretending the gig economy will go away because we don't like it, maybe we should strengthen the safety net to protect these types of contract workers. Such as expanding unemployment to contract workers who are employed for a certain timeframe. Which would also help provide protections to the large number of web developers, designers, and other tech jobs which are a growing in number in recent years who don't fit into the typical 9-to-5 framework. [1] Source: https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/nearly-95-of-all-job-growth-during-obama-era-part-time,-contract-work-449057 https://www.investing.com/news/economy-news/nearly-95-of-all... (note: this trend started before Obama, within the last years of Bush's administration, but that would be less newsworthy headline) [2] the actual study https://krueger.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/files/katz_krueger_cws_-_march_29_20165.pdf https://krueger.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/akrueger/f...
- waibelp 9y agoLong Story short translated: 1) Some people work to get paid lese than others that dont work 2) Those people need to go get help in form of money: Aufstocker 3) A lot of them need to get their food from Caritas and other organizations like "die Tafel" because they dont have enough money to buy food Yes, Germany is a wealthy country but most of its citizens are poor.
- denzil_correa 9y ago> Yes, Germany is a wealthy country but most of its citizens are poor. What do you mean by "most of the citizens" are poor? I can understand if you say that Germany income gap is increasing but I can't understand this part.
- spacedude 9y agoMostly because it's bullshit.
- kjdal2001 9y agoI think he is paraphrasing a quote from Kurt Vonnegut. "America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor..." http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealthiest-nation-on-earth-but-its-people http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/158414-america-is-the-wealth...
- moomin 9y agoYeah, we're constantly organising charity drives for the Heidelberg tent cities in the EU. Get a grip. It's a prosperous country with a decent social safety net and an extremely large middle class. And a record of electing sensible moderates, but I'm sure that's a complete coincidence.
- someSven 9y agoNo one needs to get donated food. These leftovers are given away for free instead of throwing them away. Some people are using this for propaganda, and to many are falling for it.
- shaqbert 9y agoWhile your statement is indeed true, the German way of calculating unemployment is actually more conservative than the US way. There the ones who stop looking for work are dropped from the statistics...
- jo909 9y agoThat is nothing new though. So in the boundaries of what this statistic actually measures, the number improved. The "real" statistic isn't a secret either and published at the same time by the same agency for everyone to see. http://m.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/a-1133354.html http://m.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/a-1133354.html
- MrBuddyCasino 9y agoBut that article says the numbers improved considerably. Using the same method (and tricks) to calculate unemployment, the numbers went down from 7 million in 2005 to 4 million today.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoThat's a very good article with a very fair description of the situation.
- someSven 9y agoThere is no growing inequality. There are more one person househols and immigrants with lower wages.
- thesagan 9y agoI think a citation is needed, because I see a lot of cites of the opposite. One from a long list on a quick Google search: http://www.pulse.ng/world/angela-merkel-germany-wealth-inequality-gap-growing-wider-id6416980.html http://www.pulse.ng/world/angela-merkel-germany-wealth-inequ... http://www.france24.com/en/20170323-germany-wealth-inequality-gap-growing-wider http://www.france24.com/en/20170323-germany-wealth-inequalit... http://www.dw.com/en/study-income-inequality-reaches-new-high-in-germany/a-36009472 http://www.dw.com/en/study-income-inequality-reaches-new-hig... https://www.google.com/search?q=german+wealth+inequality&tbs=qdr:y https://www.google.com/search?q=german+wealth+inequality&tbs...
- someSven 9y agoYour cited sites don't care for the reason. But Germany had a lot of immigration of people which make more money in Germany than they could at home, but less than the more native population. Singles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/19/the-biggest-reason-for-income-inequality-is-single-parenthood/&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjAqNbDt5vUAhUEiRoKHWp1Aj0QFggTMAQ&usg=AFQjCNFpAfRLds3_fYcuCFNsRtRNgAa8Ng https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/19/the-bi...
- someSven 9y agoYour cited sites don't care for the reason. But Germany had a lot of immigration of people which make more money in Germany than they could at home, but less than the more native population. Singles: http://www.google.es/url?q=https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/11/19/the-biggest-reason-for-income-inequality-is-single-parenthood/&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwjAqNbDt5vUAhUEiRoKHWp1Aj0QFggTMAQ&usg=AFQjCNFpAfRLds3_fYcuCFNsRtRNgAa8Ng http://www.google.es/url?q=https://www.forbes.com/sites/thea...
- wand3r 9y agoInterested to hear anecdotal evidence from locals. On one hand there is a large influx of immigration and "unemployment" is a dubiously defined thing. On the other, widespread education and a diversified economy seem to signal strong growth. Contrast this with America's strong numbers which for me are anecdotally bullshit. Under employment, people dropping out of the workforce who otherwise wouldn't and stagnant wages in most industries
- eleitl 9y agoThey added over a million of migrants in a single year, almost none of them are employed and are even long-term unemployable. Meanwhile, the official unemployment figures have gone down. If you apply the same unemployment metrics as Austria, Germany has pretty much exactly the same unemployment rate as Austria.
- wand3r 9y agoMakes sense. I'm of the mind the immigration allowance will prob be net good; but short term it has to negatively impact honest unemployment numbers
- zo1 9y agoWhat "net good" do you conceive exactly? Of importing 1 million unskilled, probably uneducated individuals that wouldn't be able to speak the local language without months/years of language learning? If you have unemployment in your country then, by definition, you don't have enough jobs for the individuals already in your country. That is the whole point of the unemployment metric. To determine how well in-sync your economy is with the rate of population growth. If anything, unemployment should be a signal to kick people out, not let them in. However, neither up/down fixes it, because it's not a fixed pie. But your ratio is most certainly not going to be "net good" long-term or short-term by importing individuals that are unable to contribute.
- davrosthedalek 9y ago
- ryanmarsh 9y agoIt's very difficult to believe these (and American) unemployment numbers for various reasons. At what point do legitimate gov't studies begin to suffer a loss of credibility similar to the "fake news" epidemic?
- maxerickson 9y agoOver here in run down small town America the low unemployment figures are pretty easy to believe. The local Walmart had to stop drug testing in order to find enough people to hire and they are still miserably short staffed. They might not be the "all the able bodied young people not working" numbers you want them to be, but they say something about the state of the labor pool.
- T-hawk 9y agoWhat it says is that Walmart's wages aren't high enough. A so-called labor shortage is really just a failure of the employer to recognize the market-clearing price for labor. Demand exceeding supply means that the price should rise. If Walmart were to pay $20/hour, I bet they'd have no problem finding as many workers as they need.
- maxerickson 9y agoSure, but needing to increase wages to hire is something you'd expect in a "tight" labor environment, the environment pointed to by employment statistics. That the statistics don't measure other economic factors seems to be incredibly frustrating to some people that are convinced that labor statistics should measure things other than labor though.
- Angostura 9y agoWhat would these "various reasons" be? At what point do unsubstantiated criticisms help fuel the fake news epidemic?
- ryanmarsh 9y ago
- glasz 9y agoperspective: the richest 1% of germany owns 31% of all the country's wealth. 36 german billionairs own as much as half the other population. source: https://www.oxfam.de/ueber-uns/aktuelles/2017-01-16-8-maenner-besitzen-so-viel-aermere-haelfte-weltbevoelkerung https://www.oxfam.de/ueber-uns/aktuelles/2017-01-16-8-maenne... so, economy might be growing but who is to gain? either way you calculate, certainly not the common men. which, for me, renders these statistics moot.
- davrosthedalek 9y agoI never followed that logic. I'm not poor because the guy next to me has more. If you want to look how poor or not poor the other 99% are, you should look at those 99%, and what standard of living they can afford.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]