Pension expert: Forecast for pension increase in 2024 higher than official estimate

Pension expert: Forecast for pension increase in 2024 higher than official estimate

According to a report by www.derwesten.de, how will the pension develop from July 2024? Around 21 million pensioners will then expect the next adjustment. But how big will the increase really be? Most recently, the report caused sobering that it could only go up by 3.5 percent. But the last word has not yet been spoken - and one expert sticks to his estimate, which looks completely different.

Why only 3.5 percent according to the official estimate?

Pension expert Peter Knöppel from rentenbescheid24.de reaches hundreds of thousands of people with his YouTube videos. But now many of his followers were irritated because the insider's forecast for 2024 was far more confident than the 3.5 percent that is now in the official estimate of the pension insurance report. How does this discrepancy come about?

Knöppel believes that this 3.5 percent is set too low. On the one hand, the pension insurance report 2022. Here, too, there was an estimate for the pension increase in the following year - it was 3.53 percent (West). In fact, this July there was an adjustment of the pension of 4.39 percent in West Germany. That's why he would be "very cautious" about taking the current estimate as given.

Pension: Wage increases have been significantly higher so far in 2023

On the other hand, Knöppel took a current look at wage developments in Germany in the months of July, August and September. The development of wages is the basis for the annual pension adjustments. Accordingly, the wage increase in September was 6.1 percent compared to the same month last year.

From January 2023 there has been “definitely a significant wage increase of well over 3 percent”. This applies until the end of the third quarter of 2023. If there is not an “absolute collapse in wage development” in the last quarter, based on this data, there should be more in the pension than just 3.5 percent more. However, Knöppel emphasizes that these are only his estimates and assumptions. In any case, there will only be clarity next spring, when the federal government will announce the exact percentage amount of the pension increase.

After analyzing the report, it is clear that the 3.5 percent pension increase estimate in 2024 is likely an underestimate. Due to the discrepancy between previous estimates and actual increases, as well as significantly higher wage increases in 2023, it is likely that the pension increase in 2024 will be higher. This could have an impact on the market and the financial sector, as higher pension increases could lead to increased spending and thus a change in pensioners' consumption behavior. This, in turn, could impact various industries and companies.