As of: March 28, 2024, 6:00 p.m
By: Jana Stabener
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Ten years ago, Germany introduced the legal minimum wage. But compared to other EU countries, we do poorly, criticizes one expert.
The statutory minimum wage has existed in Germany since January 1, 2015. Ten years ago, the federal cabinet decided on a minimum wage of 8.50 euros. It has now risen quite a bit: since January 1, 2024, the statutory minimum wage has been 12.41 euros gross per hour. The next increase is already planned for 2025 - then the minimum wage will rise to 12.82 euros.
Is that enough? After all, politicians keep discussing the fact that working is no longer worth it compared to citizens' money. Malte Lübker from the Tariff and Income Analysis Department of the Economic and Social Sciences Institute (WSI), writes at
BuzzFeed News Germany
, a portal from IPPEN.MEDIA, that Germany should urgently improve the minimum wage. But his view has nothing to do with the amount of citizens' money.
More on the topic: The minimum wage will increase in two steps by 2025 - who can expect more money soon
Minimum wage: An increase to “13.61 euros would have been necessary” as early as 2023
“By raising the minimum wage to twelve euros, Germany has taken a big step towards an appropriate minimum wage, as required by the European Minimum Wage Directive,” says Lübker to
BuzzFeed News Germany.
However, it was only recently that the employers, against the votes of the unions in the Minimum Wage Commission, managed to ensure that the minimum wage was only growing very “slightly”. This means that the minimum wage increase in 2024 is “absolutely inadequate” for many.
This is becoming a problem because the federal government has to implement the EU minimum wage directive into national law - the member states only have until November 15, 2024 to do this. The directive requires, among other things, at least 60 percent of the median wage in the respective country or 50 percent of the average wage for an appropriate minimum wage. In order to achieve this goal, a minimum wage of “13.61 euros would have been necessary” in 2023 and around 14 euros in the current year 2024, according to the WSI minimum wage report, in which Lübker was involved.
Especially in comparison with other European countries, Germany is clearly lagging behind: While the minimum wage here only rose by 3.4 percent at the turn of the year, it was an average (median) of 9.7 percent in all 22 EU countries. Many Eastern European countries increased particularly sharply, but also the Netherlands (+12.9 percent) and Ireland (+12.4 percent). Only in Belgium (+2.0 percent) did the minimum wage rise more slowly than in Germany - but here another increase is imminent
March 31st, as reported by the Belgian media.
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More on the topic: Minimum wage should rise to 12.41 euros: Economist says that even 13.50 euros would be too little
Expert sees minimum wage commission's move
If the increased cost of living is taken into account, the minimum wage in Germany even falls by one percent. The reason: Measured by the consumer price index, prices in this country rose by 3.6 percent between October 2022 (time of the previous adjustment) and January 2024, i.e. 0.2 percent more, when the minimum wage increased.
Germany has also done poorly in terms of the long-term development of the minimum wage since its introduction in 2015: since 2015, the German minimum wage has increased in real terms by 15.2 percent. This gain in purchasing power is almost entirely due to the extraordinary increase to twelve euros in October 2022.
So what to do? “It is now important that the minimum wage commission follows the previous course of larger increases,” says Lübker to
BuzzFeed News Germany
. “To this end, the threshold of 60 percent of the median wage should be anchored as a target in the minimum wage law – as Hubertus Heil and Olaf Scholz have also called for in 2021.”
More on the topic: Minimum wage: One in four people in Germany earns less than the EU directive actually stipulates