Society: Same and different: Germany in the year 33 of unity

Success story or tragedy? When it comes to the state of German unity, it is the perspective that counts. In his annual report published today, Eastern Commissioner Carsten Schneider celebrates progress, including the equalization of pension values ​​in East and West and the increase in the minimum wage, which benefits many in the East. On the other hand, much inequality remains, even 33 years after unification. And some discontent.

He’ll get to the problems soon, said Schneider at his press conference in Berlin. But the SPD politician once again said what an “unbelievable gain” German unification had been. And very personally: “I don’t know where I would have ended up if German unity hadn’t come,” said the 47-year-old Thuringian. It’s easy to forget that in the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

But looking back at the historically phenomenal moment of peaceful revolution and unification no longer supports everyone. In a current Infratest survey for the ARD program “Listen to us! We East Germans and the West”, 57 percent of the approximately 1,300 respondents nationwide were of the opinion that East and West had grown together less strongly or not at all since 1990.

In East Germany even 62 percent said that. “The differences between East and West are as if cemented in,” complained Left Party leader Dietmar Bartsch and wrote the traffic light a “poor” rating in his report card. The CDU’s representative for the East, Sepp Müller, also saw “wrong accents”.

Lower wages are exciting – conditions are changing

What remains exciting is that, on average, earnings in the East are still lower than in the West. According to data from the annual report, the average annual gross wage in the East in 2022 was 34,841 euros, around 86 percent of the level in the West. At the same time, the economic power per inhabitant is lower: the gross domestic product per capita is 79 percent of the value in the West.

But conditions are changing. “East German industry has successfully repositioned itself in recent years,” says Schneider’s report. “A modern industrial base with new settlements and jobs has emerged.”

According to Schneider, these include small and medium-sized companies, but also international heavyweights such as the US chip manufacturer Intel with its planned factory near Magdeburg and Tesla in Brandenburg. “Fundamentally, the job market has changed completely,” said Schneider. Skilled workers are now in high demand, even in the eastern federal states, and they are no longer available as cheaply as they were years ago.

The great exodus is over

The shortage of skilled workers is only a fragment of the larger issue of demographics. “While in 1990 the population in the East was on average younger than in the West, this ratio has now been reversed,” the report says. In 2021, 17 percent of people in the East were younger than 20 years, and in the West almost 19 percent. 27 percent were over 65 years old in the East and 22 percent in the West.

After all, the great wave of migration from East to West has turned. “In the period 2017 to 2021, the eastern German federal states recorded slight gains in internal migration,” the report says. The bottom line is that there was still a loss for the eastern German states in 2021, a so-called migration loss of 1.2 million people. “A generation is basically gone,” said Schneider.

So far, relatively few have come from abroad: in the five eastern German states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, the proportion of immigrants was less than ten percent – compared to 24.3 percent nationwide.

Many East Germans in the countryside

There are also stark differences in the distribution of residents between cities and rural areas. According to Schneider’s data, around 55 percent of people in the east live in rural regions, and in the west 26 percent. Because younger people moved away, the proportion of older people in smaller communities in the east is higher and the proportion of people of working age is lower – lower than in the west in urban and rural areas and also lower than in eastern German cities.

For the report, Schneider had extensive data collected in a “Germany monitor” in order to shed light not only on East-West differences, but also on the urban-rural divide. However, the results of the political scientist Everhard Holtmann remained pale. The most important thing: The vast majority of people in cities and rural areas are satisfied with their living environment, one in five are not.

Where the east is top

The wage gap between women and men is smaller in the East, at least when comparing average hourly wages: In the West, this “unadjusted gender pay gap” between men and women was 19 percent, in the East it was only 7 percent. Mothers with small children are more likely to work in the East than in the West (48.8 percent to 37.8 percent). More children under three are in daycare. And: According to studies, men help more with private tasks in the East than in the West. In addition, there are more hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants in the east, although the number of clinics is lower. Apartments are also often easier to find and finance in the east, as Holtmann said.

Where the East is different

According to the report, support for the ecological restructuring of the economy is weaker in eastern Germany than in the west. “56 percent of those surveyed in West Germany are ‘very much in favor’, in East Germany it is 37 percent.” When it comes to information on personal behavior – such as avoiding air travel for the sake of the climate, purchasing green electricity or making donations and commitment to nature conservation groups – the survey values ​​in the East are all significantly behind those in the West. Of the West German respondents, 12 percent said they were vegetarian. In the east it was four percent.