I sat and read a short piece from Focus on finance today.
One thing that you tend to notice these days in Germany....compared to the 1980s....is that people have jobs....yet there are a fair number which are borderline poverty-class. It's difficult to explain this problem.
According to the numbers from Focus....between 2004 and 2014....the number of skilled-workers below the poverty-line doubled in one decade period. Focus then notes that it's risen more strongly in Germany than any other EU nation.
They figure with 2014 numbers.....roughly 4.1 million Germans who you'd put into the skilled trades....were near or on poverty status.
Some Germans will say that when the Deutsche Mark arrived and the rate of exchange was figured up....it was unfairly done in some ways, and pumped up the cost of living (grocery items, cars, rent, etc). You don't see studies done to prove that point though.
The arrival of the immigrants? This in some odd way figures into this whole poverty business. You have a fair sum of people with minimum skills or craft-ability. So they come into the system with minimum opportunities and will eventually get jobs which are all at the poverty level. The odds of moving up or out of the poverty level? Pretty dismal. In some ways, the immigration period is simply going to help bump up the statistical numbers and add onto the 4.1 million. It wouldn't surprise me that by 2020....it's closer to 5 million in the poverty class.
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