One fifth of all full-time employees are low-wage earners - at this gross salary
Created: 01/07/2022, 10:13 AM
The study shows large differences in income by region, gender, industry and qualification.
© Daniel Karmann / dpa
The number of low-wage earners in Germany has fallen significantly.
However, there are still major differences depending on the region, job and gender, as current figures show.
Almost a fifth of all full-time employees in Germany are
low-wage earners
.
You have to make ends meet on a
gross wage of
less than EUR 2,284 per month
.
This is the result of a study by the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) of the union-affiliated Hans Böckler Foundation.
Women, young full-time employees, those with foreign citizenship and people without a professional qualification have to get by on
low wages
more than average .
In addition, the proportion of low-wage earners in eastern Germany is still significantly higher than in the west.
The
study
is based on pay data from the Federal Employment Agency.
Nationwide, around 18.7 percent of full-time employees were among the low-wage earners in 2020, earning less than two-thirds of the median gross monthly wage of all full-time employees subject to social insurance.
Compared to 2011, however, this is a noticeable improvement.
At that time, 21.1 percent of full-time employees fell into the low-wage category *.
"In recent years we have succeeded in pushing back the lower pay range," said Helge Emmler, one of the authors of the study, describing the trend.
This applies in particular to eastern Germany.
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The study shows
large differences in income by region, gender, industry and qualification
. While in 2020 in
Wolfsburg
just 6.4 percent and in
Erlangen
only 8.3 percent of the full-time employees worked in the lower pay range, in
Görlitz
, the
Saale-Orla district
and the
Erzgebirge
district it was more than 40 percent. Low rates of low-wage earners are mostly to be found in cities and metropolitan areas where large employers from industry, finance and knowledge or administration play an important role.
Nationwide, 25.4 percent of women had to get by on a low monthly income despite full-time work, but only 15.4 percent of men.
Training
also
plays a major role: the proportion of low-wage earners was 40.8 percent for full-time employees without a vocational qualification, 17.8 percent for those with a vocational qualification and only 4.9 percent for those with a university certificate.
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There were also huge differences
between the
industries .
In the hospitality industry (68.9 percent), contract work (67.9) and agriculture and forestry (52.7), more than half of the full-time employees worked in the lower pay bracket.
In the metal and electrical industry, on the other hand, it was only 7.6 percent, in the finance and insurance industry 4.2 percent and in the public sector only 2.5 percent of full-time employees.
(dpa / ahu) * Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
