Unemployment in Germany: Appearance and reality
►http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/nov2011/unem-n12.shtml
In 2010 the number of penalties imposed by the employment authorities increased by 14 percent nationwide compared to the year before. This year the BA expects to issue nearly a million such penalties. These measures hit people under 25 especially hard. In many cases, the victims lose all entitlement to benefits and in some cases even their rent subsidies. One in ten young unemployed persons has received at least one sanction. In the statistics the impact of such harassment is positively evaluated: the greater the number of these vindictive penalties, the less official unemployed.
It is only on the basis of such statistical trickery that the BA arrives at the relatively low unemployment rate for Germany compared to other countries. If one considers the total number of benefits’ recipients, the official figure swells enormously—bearing in mind that this total does not include the jobless who, for various reasons, draw no benefits.
Furthermore, according to the BA’s preliminary estimate for October, over 5.1 million employed people between the ages of 15 and 65 years drew unemployment benefits.