Currently, there’s a lot of talk about short-term and long-term risks to the labor market in Germany. There’s the “Brexit” vote, still unsolved structural problems in Europe that showed during the financial and currency crisis, and the migration into Europe from the Near East and Africa. Those problems are undeniably real, and have to be approached by the forces that be. Still, various analysis and statistics point straight up for the labor market. The Federal Labor Office has been reporting record lows in the number of qualified workers looking for work, and private organization add some interesting numbers of their own.

The goal of the grand coalition between 2005 and 2009 was right and proper: the overall financial burden for employers and employees from social security contributions should drop and stay below 40% in the long term. Starting in 2008, with a short interruption during the years after the financial crisis, this was achieved up to this year. Unemployment contributions and pension contributions have remained at a low level, those for nursing care insurance have been raised only slightly and several reforms have kept the health insurance contributions in check. However, the overall level might soon rise above the magic number of 40%. Already the average is 39.8%, and many employees are above 40% already.

We are halfway through 2016. This time of year, various institutes traditionally publish their prognosis for the coming six months. In this, the expectations of the Institute for Employment Research hit pretty close to reality.

Experience says that most of those good intentions we started the year with have dissolved in the everyday grind of reality by now. Even more reason to stop now and readjust ones habits, especially for those involved in HR: Make it a goal to truly only use objective criteria when deciding on a hire. While most would agree that this is a goal to strife for, it is much harder to truly life by, since humans are in our very nature biased.

Feeling stressed is a very subjective thing. It therefore helps to take a look at the yearly study about the world of employment done by the Federal Employment Agency. Recently, said study for 2015 was published. It is compiled out of data about sick days, polls done in companies and work councils, and other sources.

The picture shows the same kind of work, but less income, and as a result also lower pensions after retirement; the data recently published by the Federal Statistical Office shows that the difference of pay between men and women has gone down, but still women get paid less for the same work than men do. It almost seems like women are unable to escape that inequity even in our modern 21st century. The published data has drawn some criticism, though.

Since January 2015, Germany has a minimum wage of currently 8.50 Euros her work hour. In a previous post, we already talked about the effects of that law on the labor market in general. However, internships can also be affected by the minimum wage, depending on the circumstances. In this post, we will talk about some of the special cases.