Migration and Numbers Story

It's a page-two type story but it's one that Germans will sit at a bar and discuss with others over implications.  ARD (Channel One, public TV) tells the story.

The national office in Germany, for statistics, put out a report today, for 2017 numbers.  Eleven million people are registered in Germany, who are NOT German.  I happen to be one of the eleven million.

It's roughly a 6-percent increase over the previous year.

So out of the 11 million....about 5.92 million are from outside of the EU.  The rest are are a mixture, with almost one-third coming from Poland, and a second third coming out of Romania.

A downward trend?  Well, the statistics folks looked at 2016 and compared against 2017.  Back in 2016, there were around 260,000 who came in from Syria.....but last year, just 61,000.  The same trend occurred with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The upward trend?  This got into an interesting piece of data....439,000 folks came from within the EU.

So then they discussed 2018.  So far, with the first quarter of 2018, there's only 40,000 who've made their way into Germany.  A quarter of that group are Syrians. 

If you were going back to the summer of 2015, and comparing against today....it's monumental in terms of change.  Hardly anyone whines or says much over the 439,000 who came in last year from EU countries.  If you walked into a right-wing group or AfD political group....I just don't see anyone saying anything much against folks from Greece, or Italy, or Czech.  Why the large number?  Jobs.  The fact that the jobs rate is near the 3.5-percent range says a lot. 

When was the last time that Germany had 7-percent unemployment?  Early 2010.  You can go back to tradingeconomics.com and look at the ten-year rate.  The worst level in 25 years?  You'd have to go back to around 2004, where it was 11-percent.  The best level?  Oh, we are  light-years away from the best level that occurred around the 1961 to 1970 period, and the unemployment rate was bumping around at .5-percent (yes, half of one-percent) for a fair amount of that period.  Everyone who wanted a job....had a job. 

Amongst all the negative talk that can be dumped on Merkel and the past dozen years....the one thing you can't really talk much about is unemployment, or lack of business growth. 

So are we out of the dark period of migration issues?  Presently, I'd say yes.  If this Merkel coalition could hold the numbers at this level through 2020, then the 2021 national election would likely see the AfD lose votes, and drop out of the national picture.  This would restore political stability back to the SPD and CDU.