On the first anniversary of the introduction of Germany’s minimum wage, Andrea Nahles, SPD Minister for Social Affairs and Employment, trade unions, and research institutes have arrived at a similar conclusion in so far as they agree that no negative impact on the employment market has yet been felt. The Hans-Böckler union based foundation goes even further in believing that the introduction of the €8.5 per hour minimum rate has actually been instrumental in kick starting employment. Two questions dominate the debate, namely should the minimum wage level be raised and should the minimum wage paid to asylum seekers be lowered in order to ease their integration into the labor market?
For Andrea Nahles, the minimum wage is a clear ‘success story’. Almost 3.7 million workers are benefitting from the new law that constitutes “the biggest social reform in several decades”. The Minister pushed the positive theme saying that “Contrary to widely and loudly exclaimed fears (editor’s note: The IFO, the Munich based economics institute, had forecast almost one million job losses), the new law had not negatively impacted the German economy nor had jobs been lost.
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