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Short of the poverty line: One in five full-time employees earns less than 2,500 euros

2023-03-07T19:43:13.475Z


Despite working full-time, every fifth person earns less than 2,500 euros gross per month, according to the Ministry of Labour. This means that 20 percent of working people are close to the poverty line.


Despite working full-time, every fifth person earns less than 2,500 euros gross per month, according to the Ministry of Labour.

This means that 20 percent of working people are close to the poverty line.

Berlin – While the inflation rate remains high, 20 percent of the working population has to make do with an income of less than 2,500 euros gross per month.

This resulted in a question to the Federal Ministry of Labor from the left-wing faction, which the

Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung

first reported on.

According to this, in 2021 a total of 4.7 million people who work 40 hours a week will have less than 30,000 euros gross per year at their disposal.

In East Germany, this even affected 30 percent of the population.

Every third person has less than 3000 euros gross per month

With a gross salary of 2,500 euros per month, depending on the tax class, between 1,400 and 1,900 euros remain after taxes and duties.

In 2021, a single person with less than 1251 euros net per month was considered at risk of poverty in the EU.

The 4.7 million people who have less than 2,500 euros gross per month are just above this threshold.

It is important to note here that this is the threshold from 2021 – before high inflation ate up wages.

Millions of people who just barely missed the poverty line two years ago may now have been pushed into poverty by inflation.

As the

Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung

further reports, more than one in three earns less than 3,000 euros gross per month.

That's between 1600 and 2100 euros net.

In 2021, this affected 7.1 million people.

Is 2500 euros a month enough to live on?

Of course, it also depends to a large extent on the expenses whether the salary is sufficient to live on.

Single people with a small salary slide into poverty faster than a married couple, where one earns significantly more than the other.

The living situation can also drastically change the picture: in a flat-sharing community, the expenses are spread across several shoulders; if you live alone, you have to be able to pay for everything yourself.

This context is not included in the information provided by the Department of Labor.

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Millions of people in Germany earn just 2,500 euros gross per month.

© Arno Burgi/dpa

Nevertheless, a salary of 30,000 euros per year is well below the average.

In 2022, the median gross salary in Germany was around 45,000 euros a year.

So every fifth person in Germany earns just two-thirds of the average salary.

Poverty: Large parts of the population are affected in eastern Germany

If you only look at East Germany, then 31.9 percent, i.e. almost a third of full-time employees, earn less than 2500 euros gross.

According to the Federal Statistical Office, 16 percent of the population were officially at risk of poverty in 2021.

However, this affected all sections of the population, i.e. both full-time and part-time employees as well as the unemployed.

List of rubrics: © Arno Burgi/dpa

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-03-07

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