Mind you, it is not like I am not happy to hear good results reported by business. According to the latest statistics by the Federal Employment Agency of October, “only” 2.945 million people have no job. After the dark predictions of a few months ago due to the economical crisis, this is a really good number.
Unfortunately, I remember the announcement that Hartz-IV recipients will no longer get anything for their retirement insurance.
“For example, the state pays 1.8 billion Euros every year for one long-term jobless person to have two additional Euros of retirement money”, is what von der Leyen said in defence of this procedure.
Well, let us do the calculation: 1,800,000,000 Euros / 12 Months/ 40 Euro. That equals 3,750,000 Hartz-IV recipients for whose retirement insurance 40 additional Euros are paid.
I was a little perplexed and looked for the current numbers on ALG I and II.
You can read in the Federal Employment Agency’s monthly report (Monatsbericht) for October that we currently have 4,766,592 recipients of ALG II and 825,870 recipients of ALG I.
That made me even more perplexed. How do they come up with those numbers?
Since I did not wish to read through all the 86 pages of the monthly report, I looked it up in Wikipedia. If you type in unemployment (Arbeitslosigkeit), you get the following information:
Since the calculation modes have changed in the year 2005, there is still no absolute clarity about who – according to § 16 SGB III – is actually named “jobless” in the German statistics.
The following jobless are not included in the statistics:
- People who currently do a state-subsidised ABM;
- People who hold a “1-Euro-Job”;
- People who are re-training;
- People who have enrolled in a language course.
Likewise not in the statistics are:
- Retired persons who opted for “part time old-age work”;
- Interim Allowance recipients;
- Disabled persons;
- People on reduced hours;
- Unregistered jobless persons;
- Jobless persons who, after having had to be punished, no longer receive money from the Federal Agency;
- Self-employed persons who only survive because they get subsidies from the Federal Employment Agency.
“I trust no statistics that I did not forge myself” (No, this is not by Churchill).
LW
(Translated by EG)
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