Scholz and the labor market: Record employment despite rising unemployment!

In a current assessment of the government's balance sheet, Chancellor Olaf Scholz highlighted the high employment figure for 2024. Loud Picture On average, 46.1 million people were working in Germany. Labor market expert Holger Schäfer explained that this increase in jobs was particularly noticeable in government-related areas, such as education, social affairs, health and administration.

Nevertheless, unemployment has increased by 168,000 since January 2024. The development in migration is also noteworthy, as a total of 18,384 migrants were deported between January and November 2024. This represents an increase of 20% compared to the previous year and is the highest value since 2021. In contrast, significantly fewer deportations were carried out in 2020 due to the corona pandemic.

Analysis of migration and asylum requests

Despite the high number of deportations carried out, fewer deportations were registered in 2024 than in the years of the grand coalition from the refugee crisis in 2015 to the start of the pandemic. The employment situation for refugee Ukrainians is showing a positive development: In July 2024, 266,000 Ukrainians were employed in Germany, which corresponds to an increase of 71,000 compared to the previous year. In the summer, these 266,000 employees were compared to more than 700,000 people who receive citizen's benefit, including half a million people who are able to work.

The employment rate of Ukrainians in Germany is 25% in the fall, which lags significantly behind Poland and Great Britain, where this rate is over 60%. In addition, there was a decline in asylum applications in 2024 by 15% compared to 2022 and by 34% compared to 2023. Scholz spoke of a “turnaround in dealing with migration” for decades and emphasized that fewer people sought asylum in Germany in the five years before he took office than in the three years of Olaf Scholz's government. Migration experts are skeptical and do not see a “Scholz effect” because Germany benefits from developments in other countries. Germany remains the most important destination country for asylum seekers within the EU, accepting 24% of all migrants, while the population share is 19%.

Meanwhile, in the USA, Donald Trump announced his plans for the largest deportation in the country's history daily news reported. Trump wants to start deporting criminal immigrants and has appointed Tom Homan, the former head of the US border protection agency ICE, as border patrol agent. Homan confirmed that planning for the mass deportations was already well underway. It is estimated that there are between 11 and 12 million illegal immigrants living in the United States.

Critics call the plans shameful and illegal, while the American Immigration Council estimates the financial cost of deporting about a million people a year at more than $88 billion. Additionally, illegal immigrants make up about 5% of the U.S. workforce, paying around $100 billion in taxes in 2022. Democratic politicians are demanding President Joe Biden take action against Trump's deportation plans, while California and other states and cities have announced they will oppose the plan. Trump's plans for mass deportations are on a significantly larger scale compared to Barack Obama, who deported around 3 million people during his term in office.