Jobs Story

So ARD (public German TV, Channel One) carried this story today, and it answers some questions....but begs more.

According to the German government.....half of the refugees and migrants who came in the period of 2013 to 2016.....have jobs today.  The data?  It comes from the Federal Employment Agency.

The data says that 68-percent (say two-thirds) of those 'working' in this data group.....are either in full-time or part-time work at present.  They are careful not to split the full-time basis away from the part-time basis, and one might suspect that it's a 50-50 split.  But you can't be sure of that conclusion.

Another 17-percent....are on some type of work-training episode.

Three-percent are in some intern work, meaning that they get paid a modest income (enough to survive) and hope to get real work at the conclusion of the internship.

12- percent are 'marginally' employed.  This is defined in any fashion, and one might assume that this is temp-work (hotel-maid, cook, or part-time taxi-driver on some rare occasions).

A positive trend?  If you use past periods (like the Balkans war period or the mid-1990s)....then yes, it's more positive than you'd expect.

In the Wiesbaden region, a lot of the migrant guys ended up with delivery services (DHL, Amazon, Hermes, etc).  I haven't had a package delivered by a German guy in at least two years.  All have been none-German.

So does this mean that the immigration pattern is somewhat successful?  It would be if you were saying this fifty-percent employment situation were all full-time jobs.  But they were careful in avoiding that statement.  So you could have a fair amount of people....five years in Germany, and still working as a part-time or mini-job kind of guy.  A bad sign if you were nearing ten years in Germany, and still only a mini-job guy?  Yeah.

The thing I came to realize with various Syrians that I bumped into within the language classes.....most had some type of job background or university degree....that would open doors for them in Germany.  I could look at a group of ten and pretty much predict that three-quarters of them would easily be full-time employed within one year after finishing their language requirements. 

The Tunisian or Moroccan guys....without the job background or university degree?  Much less predictable.....and virtually of them were destined as delivery drivers or fast-food employment.