Parents, student loans or citizen’s allowance: young people often receive financial support. However, youth unemployment is lower than it has been for years.
Many young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 receive financial support from their family or the state. Last year, more than a third (35 percent) lived off the money of their parents or other relatives, according to the Federal Statistical Office.
In contrast, a good half (51 percent) of young people already earned most of their money themselves. 13 percent were therefore mainly dependent on public benefits such as student loans, scholarships or citizen’s allowance. One percent of young people used their own assets as a source of income.
Youth unemployment is falling
The proportion of 15- to 24-year-olds who are neither in school or vocational training nor employed was 7.5 percent in 2023. This is a similar proportion to the first two Corona years of 2020 (7.4 percent) and 2021 (7.8 percent), the Federal Office said. Before the pandemic broke out, the proportion had reached a ten-year low of 5.7 percent in 2019.
The unemployment rate among young people alone has fallen over the past three years and, at 5.9 percent in 2023, was the lowest since 2019 (5.8 percent). Over the past 20 years, youth unemployment in Germany has almost halved (2003: 11.0 percent).
Lowest youth unemployment in Germany
As in previous years, Germany was the country with the lowest youth unemployment rate in the European Union in 2023. On average across all 27 EU member states, the unemployment rate among 15- to 24-year-olds was 14.5 percent, more than twice as high as in Germany, the statisticians said. Spain (28.7 percent) and Greece (26.7 percent) were at the top in terms of youth unemployment.
Source: Stern
