politics for the 99%

Published on Spiegel Online International, by Andreas Ulrich, Jan 7, 2014. (Linked with the article: The Plight of the Roma: Part 1, Europe’s Unwanted People, Part 2, Birth Control For Gypsies, on Spiegel Online International, by Spiegel staff, January 07, 2014 … for all: Photo Gallery).

A debate over whether Germany profits from Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants has flared up since the EU opened its labor market to these workers. Statisticians are struggling to come up with conclusive evidence on either side of the argument … //

… Inconclusive Statistics:  

• Influential German weekly Die Zeit wrote that 80 percent of immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania are in jobs that require them to make social insurance contributions. This number was subsequently picked up by various other media and attributed to renowned migration researcher Klaus Bade, who headed the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR) until mid-2012.
• Asked to comment, Bade has since distanced himself from that figure. He now says that 80 percent of these immigrants are working, “and of these about 46 percent are qualified and over 20 percent are highly qualified.”
• The SVR reports “labor-market participation” of 81.4 percent for those from Romania and Bulgaria who have come to Germany since 2007, citing a special analysis of the 2011 micro-census conducted by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
• But citing “labor-market participation” means little — even those who have registered as unemployed are counted as participating in the labor market. Furthermore, only 25- to 44-year-olds were considered — the group with the highest employment rate to begin with.

Rough Analysis:

• The German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) recently concluded that the employment rate for 15-to 65-year-olds who have moved to the country from Bulgaria and Romania since 2007 was at 62.6 percent in 2011. According to the DIW, the micro-census cited by the SVR is not particularly significant because “small sample sizes” permitted only “rough analysis.” Nevertheless, the Institute for Employment Research concludes: “Overall Germany profits from this immigration.”
• But Stefan Böckler, a sociologist at the Duisburg Office for Information Logistics, disagrees. “Labor-force participation is not an indicator for a labor market integration that insures livelihoods,” he argues.
• Analysis of data from the Federal Employment Agency, Destatis and the cities of Duisburg and Dortmund, both of which have a particularly high population of these immigrants, showed that just 10.8 and 14.8 percent of this group respectively were working jobs in which they paid into the social insurance system. Meanwhile, some 90 percent of the Bulgarians and Romanians registered at the Federal Employment Agency’s job center had not completed vocational training and therefore had little chance of entering the workforce.
• More revealing statistics will only begin to emerge now that the labor market has been fully opened to Bulgarians and Romanians.

(full text).

Links:

Immigration, on Spiegel Online International;

Labor Market, on Spiegel Online International;

Like Lambs to the Slaughter: The Palestinians are sleep-walking to disaster, again, on Dissident Voice, by Daud Abdullah, January 7, 2014;

Talkin’ about a Global Revolution, on Dissident Voice, by Adam W. Parsons, January 6, 2014;

Selbstbestimmung der Frauen (zur Schweizer Initiative „Abtreibungsfinanzier​ung ist Privatsache“ vom 9. Februar 2014), auf VIMENTIS-Blog (de/fr/it), 4. Jan 2014;

Where will it kick off next? on The Guardian, by Paul Mason, Dec 27, 2013: In the networked age, country-specific predictions of political unrest like poverty or inequality are pointless

The Geopolitics of Arab Turmoil, on Immanuel Wallerstein/Articles, by Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, Sept 27, 2012;

The World Class Struggle: The Geography of Protest, on Immanuel Wallerstein/Commentary No. 330, by blog owner, June 1, 2012.