Hacker News Reader

Comment by Eumenes | Hacker News Reader

Not very - https://www.iab-forum.de/en/what-do-we-know-about-the-employ...

Less than 50% are employed 5 years after arrival, in a country with 5.7% unemployment.

I imagine adults who don't speak the language, require financial assistance, etc, will be a net drain from a tax perspective on a society, esp. when you factor in the high CoL. Its hard enough for the average naturalized citizen to be a net positive from a tax perspective, let alone someone from an entirely different world. An inconvenient/unpopular, but obvious truth.

View on HN

That data is about refugees. You are conflating new arrivals with refugees, which is not accurate. Some people might think it is even in bad faith.

What about all the other immigrants from EU or abroad whose higher education was not paid by Germany and they immigrate to Germany? Surely that is a positive. Germany is benefiting from paid-by-somebody-else qualified applicants.

Highly educated immigrants who speak the language are a net positive, for sure.

> Highly educated immigrants who speak the language

The latter isn't really a requirement, at least when working in tech. I barely speak any German at all in my job, and I'm a German dude working at a German company. All companies I worked for since 2010 had English as "company language", and immigrants were in the majority (mostly from other European countries, but also US and Canada).

Ya makes sense, with Berlin essentially being an international airport in terms of demographics. I suppose knowing English would suffice.

And it is 100% Germany's fault. Many of these people could be gainfully employed if not for Germany's beurocracy. I was abroad recently, in South Eastern Europe, and was amazed to see that in some countries there are people working who have no command of the local language, and no command of English either, and communicated in single words and with hand gestures, and they probably did not have valid work permits either. But they were working, gainfully employed and doing their job well enough. The same job (in a bakery) would require a three year trade education in Germany.

I can only agree here, because I saw it with my own eyes. If not for a group of dedicated volunteers in my town, most of the Syrian refugees would just be lost causes. The group organized transportation to job applications (it's in the sticks, no public transport, etc.), helped with paperwork, organized medical care, etc. The responsible authorities are understaffed for the problem and when staffed, you have a chance that the person in charge is actually working against the refugees. Without someone being able to read and understand the local statutes, you'd be lost.

Also your degree gets mostly not accepted for trivial reasons.

I know many engineers etc. working as taxi drivers or dish washers because their (excellent!) degree gets not accepted in DE.

At the same time industry is whining about "fachkräftemangel" - this could be a solved problem tomorrow if politics did not try to block immigrants wherever possible.

A lot of immigrant women stay home with the family, do you think that explains most of the 50% unemployment?

That would be difficult since the refugees tend not to be women.

According to the chart in the article, the employment rate looks like 56-57% for men and just under 30% for women.

To be as generous to this hypothesis as possible, we'll say 57% for men and 29% for women.

In that case, the relevant population is 71% men.

Refugees are not the bulk of immigration in Germany.

Why would that even matter?

Because they're working but not in a way that is recognized by the government data which only recognizes formal labor for a proper employer.

I would go so far as to say that the employment rate is effectively always 95%+ for every population and that the only question is whether people are working in the formal economy, in school, informally working, caring, or doing any number of other activities that make up our human society.

Doing home chores does not make you employed. You can't get a mortgage with that. You don't get a pension or anything really.

In Germany if you are on parental leave caring for a child you accrue social security benefits as if you were still at your job.

> Doing home chores does not make you employed. You can't get a mortgage with that.

Maybe you can't get a mortgage, but you can get a house.

Is that actually worse than getting a mortgage?

>> Is that actually worse than getting a mortgage?

I don't know but I think it becomes obvious that you are not employed the moment you want to move out. The house becomes a prison.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com