Multiple things: 1. Nearly no one lost his job in Germany in the last recession compared with past recessions. So yes, many companies are not eager to get new

Multiple things: 1. Nearly no one lost his job in Germany in the last recession compared with past recessions. So yes, many companies are not eager to get new workers at the moment (especially smaller companies), but most people don't need a new job. 2. It is possible to get a new job in Germany at the moment, and comparing the situation between Germany and USA: It is far easier here than in the USA. The unemployment rate in Germany is more or less constantly going down since the begin of the year. 3. While Germany has pretty high (social) taxes the maximum is around 60%, which is still high, but (far?) less than 70%. This includes basic health care (which gets worse every year, but different topic), state pension (same problem as basic health care) and payment for the unemployed (which is pretty shoddy since they changed the system to something called Hartz IV). The real problem is that the maximum taxes are around 60k Euro and that this maximum is not adjusted for inflation. This leads to bracket creep, which hits the middle class pretty hard. edit: clarified statement in 1.