Jarosław Kaczyński, criticizing the EU migration pact at the convention in Łódź, argued that migrants come to Europe for “an easy life without work.” He claimed that of those who came to Germany in 2015, “in the most optimistic version” 60 percent do not work. However, the results of German research on the employment of refugees show that more of them are working.
On October 4, the president of Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński, met with voters in Łódź at the provincial convention. He spoke among others about the mistakes made by Western European countries, which Poland should not repeat, as well as about the European Union migration pact and what threat it will cause from migrants. He explained that it is not about people who want to come to Europe for some time to work, but: “It is about those who illegally want to get to Europe, looking for a better and, above all, easy place to live here. Because many of them them – there are data from Germany – these are data saying that even in the most optimistic version, the most optimistic version, 60 percent of them do not work, and in the less pessimistic version, 65 percent [z nich] it wasn’t tainted by work at all. I’m talking about those who arrived in 2015. 20 percent worked occasionally, and only 15 percent actually worked. That’s why I’m talking about the ease of living without work,” said the PiS president.
Finally, Kaczyński said that this easy life, without work, is the “desirable” one that immigrants coming from Africa or Asia want to lead in Europe, and whom the EU will agree to accept.
Data from Germany, however, do not confirm the words of the PiS president about migrants who “didn’t work at all” there.
Research from 2020: 49 percent worked. refugees staying in Germany
The thesis about the alleged unemployment of those migrants in Germany who arrived there during the migration crisis of 2014-2015 is not new – and it is not true. We explained already in Konkret24, when, as Kaczyński said now, Deputy Minister Błażej Poboży in “Kawa na ława” on TVN24.
The employment of refugees who came to Germany after 2013 was analyzed by the Institute for Labor Market Research in Nuremberg (IAB). He used data from the IAB-BAMF-SOEP study, which has been conducted regularly since 2016, in which the institute cooperates with the German Institute for Economic Research (SOEP DIW) and the Research Center of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF-FZ).
A survey conducted in mid-2018 shows that 35 percent refugees (this is the term used in the report) who came to Germany after 2013 found work. The study was conducted on a representative group of 4,000 people. people who had been staying in Germany for an average of three years at that time. IN elaboration According to the data published by IAB in 2020, there is no information that most employees work seasonally or on a casual basis.
Afterwards, the employment situation for refugees in Germany improved, as shown by the latest IAB data. In 2020, IAB he gavethat the employment rate among refugees who came to Germany after 2013 has already increased to 49%. IN summary According to the study, the integration of this group of refugees is slightly faster than in the case of refugees from previous years, mainly those fleeing the war in Yugoslavia, because among them the employment rate after the same period spent in Germany was 44%. The IAB notes that research has shown a large difference in employment due to the gender of refugees: 57% of refugees worked in 2020. men and only 29 percent women.
The 2020 IAB study is the latest available data presented by the institute. At the end of this year, IAB plans to present the full results of research on employment among refugees, which was conducted at the turn of 2021 and 2022.
February 2023: “About 55 percent of refugees are employed.”
Professor Herbert Bruecker, head of the research area Migration, Integration and International Labor Market Research at the IAB – which is responsible for the above-mentioned research – stated in February 2023 in an interview with the website of the Bavarian radio Br.de: “Poor education, negligible knowledge of the German language – conditions for integration refugees in the labor market were difficult. But he added: “The image that many people have, that a large number of these people are not working, is not correct. About 55 percent of refugees are employed today.”
In this conversation, prof. Bruecker emphasized that the integration of refugees into the labor market continues, thanks to which the employment rate will increase in the future. “Realistically, after a period of ten to fifteen years, it will probably be somewhere between 60 and 65 percent,” he said.
Main photo source: PAP/Marian Zubrzycki