How Germany’s 2015 Syrian Refugees fared five years on.
Almost two-thirds (65%) of Syrian refugees in Germany of working-age were at least partially dependent on the social welfare scheme Hartz IV in March compared to 43% of Afghan refugees, according to the German labour agency’s June 2021 report.
As Syria remains unstable, Germany is obligated to continue hosting refugees from the country.
The large percentage of Syrian refugees participating in the Hartz IV scheme “is due, among other things, to the lack of formal qualifications and employment in occupations and job levels with pay in the lower pay range,” according to a 2020 report by the labour agency, a spokesperson told EURACTIV.
“In general, it can be said that the unemployment rate among refugees is always particularly high in the first years of residence,” Panu Poutvaara, a migration and integration expert, told newspaper FAZ.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/most-syrian-adult-refugees-in-germany-depend-on-social-welfare/
Why Multiculturalism is bad – “Heterogeneity – measured with objective shares of different ethnic, linguistic, religious and nationality groups – has been shown to have exclusionary consequences at the national (Alesina and Glaeser 2004), state/regional, and local level (Koopmans et al. 2015).For example, across U.S. cities, metropolitan areas, and counties, Alesina and colleagues (1999) demonstrate a negative relationship between ethnic fragmentation and spending on public goods like education, roads, sewers and waste disposal. According to this highly influential fractionalization literature, rising ethno-linguistic heterogeneity should heighten exclusionary beliefs and behaviors. Heterogeneity purportedly undermines trust, community and social cohesion”
https://bibliothek.wzb.eu/pdf/2021/i21-502.pdf
2017 Article – “Up to three quarters of Germany’s refugees will still be unemployed in five years’ time, according to a government minister, in a stark admission of the challenges the country faces in integrating its huge migrant population. Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for immigration, refugees and integration, told the Financial Times that only a quarter to a third of the newcomers would enter the labour market over the next five years, and “for many others we will need up to 10”.
The admission could prove awkward for Angela Merkel as she seeks a fourth term as chancellor in Bundestag elections this September. Ms Merkel saw her poll ratings plummet in 2015 when she responded to Europe’s gathering refugee crisis by throwing open Germany’s borders. The migrant issue no longer dominates the country’s nightly news bulletins, but pollsters say the question of how it will absorb the 1.3m migrants who have arrived here since the start of 2015 is still one of voters’ key concerns.
That explains the continuing popularity of the Alternative for Germany, an anti-immigrant party that is now represented in 12 of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments. The AfD’s poll ratings have fallen in recent months but the party is still expected to pick up seats in the Bundestag for the first time in this year’s election.
Initially, the influx of so many working-age, highly-motivated immigrants spurred optimism that they would mitigate Germany’s acute skills shortage and solve the demographic crisis posed by its dangerously low birth rate. Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of carmaker Daimler, said the refugees could lay the foundation for the “next German economic miracle”.
484,000 Number of refugees looking for work, up from 322,000 last July
But those hopes have faded as a new realism about the migrants’ lack of qualifications and language skills sinks in. “There has been a shift in perceptions,” Ms Özoğuz told the FT. Many of the first Syrian refugees to arrive in Germany were doctors and engineers, but they were succeeded by “many, many more who lacked skills”.
A recent report by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found that only 45 per cent of Syrian refugees in Germany have a school-leaving certificate and 23 per cent a college degree.
Statistics from the Federal Labour Agency show the employment rate among refugees stands at just 17 per cent. It said 484,000 of the refugees are looking for work, up from 322,000 last July — an increase of 50 per cent. Of those, 178,500 are officially unemployed, meaning they not only have no work but are not enrolled in any training programmes or language courses — up 27 per cent on last July.
https://www.ft.com/content/022de0a4-54f4-11e7-9fed-c19e2700005f
“In an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, that was published on 7 October 2020 on the website of the Düsseldorfer media outlet, Daniel Terzenbach, board member of the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), claimed, that after about five years, approximately half of refugees are employed. The claim turns out to be mostly true.” – It was in reference to those arriving between 2013 and 2018, not all other classes of refugee.
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mostly-true-after-about-five-years-approximately-half-of-refugees-are-employed/
Syrians are the main beneficiaries of refugee protection in Germany, yet many are still forced to rely on state welfare to survive. New figures show that only around 35% of Syrians of working age are able to make a living.
After a decade of conflict in Syria it seems unlikely that the refugees who fled abroad will be able to return home soon. In Germany, where a large proportion of Syrian refugees have applied for protection, many have found it hard to make a living. Official unemployment figures show that nearly two-thirds (65%) of Syrians who are able to work actually rely either entirely or partially on receiving public benefits.
This means that Syrians are much more likely than other migrant groups to be receiving Hartz IV benefits, as they are known in Germany: Only about 37% of migrants from Somalia and 44% of Afghans are on welfare, according to statistics from the Federal Employment Agency.
As of April 2021, about 27% of Syrians in Germany were of working age. Those attending integration courses or professional language courses are not included in unemployment figures but are counted as “underemployed”. But benefits are also paid to those who earn so little that they cannot support themselves on their income.
https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/33597/germany-twothirds-of-syrian-refugees-unable-to-support-themselves
