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Workers on an East German construction site (Berlin Brandenburg Airport)
Photo: Patrick Pleul / picture alliance / dpa
On average, a good 71 percent of skilled workers in East Germany earn less than West German skilled workers.
This affects a total of 1.59 million skilled workers in the new federal states.
This emerges from the federal government's response to a request from AfD MP René Springer.
The answer is available from the German Press Agency.
On average, more than a third of skilled workers in East Germany (38 percent) earn less than unskilled workers in West Germany.
In Saxony, this applies to 44 percent of skilled workers, in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia it is just under 40 each, in Brandenburg 39 percent and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 43 percent.
As a rule, helper activities include simpler work that does not require any relevant formal vocational training qualification.
The information is based on figures from the Federal Employment Agency.
Overall, the wage gap between East and West has narrowed only slightly over the past 20 years, as Springer emphasizes, citing the information.
Springer sees this as a major reason for the "dissatisfaction with the established parties in the East."
Different gender ratio in wages
As early as the Day of German Unity at the beginning of October, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) presented figures showing that there are still large differences in wages between East and West – also with regard to gender: Statistically speaking, women with full-time jobs earn in the East more than men, and in the West it is exactly the opposite.
"Overall, the median wages in eastern Germany are still well below those in the west," the BA had announced.
“The general trend is that the differences are decreasing – albeit only slowly.” However, the cost of living is comparatively cheap in many eastern German regions.
mamk/dpa-AFX