More than half a million Ukraine refugees are on social assistance

In August, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) "counted 546,000 Ukrainian nationals on basic security for job seekers, according to preliminary and not extrapolated information". This is what the authority writes in a report on the Ukraine flight published on Wednesday. Among them are "355,000 people of working age (employable beneficiaries) and 191,000 non-employable beneficiaries (usually children)".

Before the start of the war on February 24, only 17,000 Ukrainians were living in Germany with basic security. Since the war, their number has increased by 529,000. The BA assumes that with these numbers it must be assumed that in August "not all refugees (from Ukraine, ed.) were registered by the job centers".

Relatively few Ukrainians – three quarters are women – have found a job. According to the BA report published on Wednesday, the most recent figures come from June, when a total of 95,000 Ukrainian employees subject to social security contributions were counted in this group; that was an increase of 38,000 people since the beginning of the war on February 24. At that time, there were already some migrant workers from the Ukraine living in Germany.

The information provided by the BA on Ukrainian recipients of basic income support and employees is a reliable basis for answering the question of how many Ukrainians who have fled are now at least living in Germany. Because the much higher information from the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR) does not show how many of the Ukrainians registered there have already returned to another country or to their homeland.

More than 1.1 million Ukrainians are now registered in the AZR, an increase of more than 900,000 since February. However, those who have already left the country are only removed from the same register after long delays.

Ukrainians and the approximately 30,000 non-Ukrainians who lived with a permanent residence permit in the country attacked by Russia and fled to Germany receive a protection permit in this country without going through an asylum procedure. Since June 1, they have been allowed to switch to the "normal" basic security scheme, which is also given to local unemployed people and recognized asylum seekers.

Due to this special effect, the unemployment figures in Germany are currently rising significantly. According to the BA, “an increase in unemployment from July to August is common due to the summer break. This year, however, it was stronger than usual.” According to this, in August 4.5 million people in Germany received unemployment benefit II (Hartz IV) or wage replacement benefits for the unemployed (SGB III). “Since May 2022, the number of beneficiaries has increased by 337,000. The increase can be explained by the fact that Ukrainian refugees have been able to apply for basic security benefits for jobseekers since June 1, 2022,” writes the BA.

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Source: WORLD

If many Ukrainians want to stay in Germany permanently, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) predicts very good chances of integration. There are practically no illiterates among them, and the integration courses are attended with great diligence.

In the past, however, the hopes expressed by politicians and business associations that migrants seeking protection could be employed as skilled workers soon after their arrival were regularly refuted by empirical evidence.

For example, in 2020 the Institute for Labor Market Research of the BA examined the employment integration of those hundreds of thousands of people seeking protection who had moved there from the beginning of 2013 to the end of 2016. The survey conducted together with the BAMF showed that 17 percent of the immigrants aged between 18 and 64 were employed two years after entry, four years later 42 percent and five years after entry 49 percent. It was 57 percent for men and 29 percent for women.

At the time, the researchers tried to sell the results as a positive balance and titled their study "Five years since the refugee migration in 2015: Integration into the labor market and education system is making further progress". However, they wrote in their study that of the 49 percent who were employed five years after entering Germany, 44 percent were volunteers. They also noted that only 68 percent of employed asylum seekers were in “full-time or part-time employment” — without specifying exactly how many were doing so full-time or part-time.

The reports from state-related institutes on the labor market success of immigrants are usually missing information on how often these are jobs in which the people can take care of themselves and their families without receiving additional social assistance.

In general, however, it can be said that among the so-called employable beneficiaries - in addition to the unemployed, these are also "top-ups" who receive social benefits under SGB II in addition to their earned income - the proportion of migrants is particularly high: 56 percent of the employable beneficiaries, colloquially known as Hartz IV -Recipients called, had a migration background at the end of 2021. This number will continue to increase as a result of the Ukraine refugees, who have been able to receive SGB II benefits since June.

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