Quality of employment Persons employed entitled to unemployment benefits

What is the proportion of employees who are entitled to wage replace­ment be­ne­fits in case of unemploy­ment?

Persons in dependent employ­ment are entitled to benefits if they paid con­tri­bu­tions to unemployment in­surance for at least a year in the last two years. The reference variable is persons in paid employ­ment aged bet­ween 15 and 64 years. Not included are public officials as, due to their status, they cannot be dismissed.

The contribution to unemploy­ment insurance currently is 2.6% of gross re­mu­nera­tion and employers and employees each pay half of it. Unemploy­ment benefit I paid in case of need amounts to 60% of pre­vious year’s gross sa­la­ry and to 67% if there are children. Gene­rally it is paid for a year. After that period, all people capable of earning get Citizen's benefit which, how­ever, is not an in­surance benefit and is based on the persons’ need of as­sis­tance.

The minimum contributory period required to be entitled to unemploy­ment benefit has not been taken into account in the calculat­ion. Con­sequently, the share of per­sons in­sured and entitled to wage replac­ement benefits is somewhat smaller in reality.

91.3% of employees are insured against unemployment

In 2023, 91.3% of employees were entitled to unemploy­ment benefit if they lost their jobs.

In 2023, the proportion of employees protected against un­employ­ment was slightly higher as in 2000, when it was 88.7%. It decreased to 85.5% by 2006, rising again by 5.6 percen­tage points since 2007. This develop­ment was due above all to the increase of marginal employ­ment relation­ships for which there is no cor­res­pond­ing insurance cover.

The number of employees with full subject to social insurance con­tri­bu­tions de­creased bet­ween 2000 and 2006, whereas the number of persons in mar­gi­nal part-time em­ploy­ment was up in that period as a result of legal changes intro­duced in 2003. Since 2007, the number of persons with full subject to social insurance con­tri­bu­tions has again in­creased slightly. As the increase in the number of per­sons in marginal employ­ment was smaller, the share of emplo­yees insured against unemplo­yment has increased from 86.0% in 2009 to 91.3%.

Foreign employees are less often insured against unemployment

The rate of insured persons among foreigners was lower than among German ci­ti­zens: in 2023, 89.4% of the foreign emplo­yees, compared to 91.6% of the German emplo­yees, were insured against unemplo­yment. Since 2013 the difference has decreased: at that time, the difference between German and foreign emplo­yees took almost seven per­cen­tage points.

Information on the Indicator

Description or definition
Percentage of persons in employment with full social insurance con­tri­bu­tions in all persons with social insurance contributions.

Source
Employment Statistics of the Federal Employ­ment Agency.

Information for interpretation
Since only persons with full social insurance con­tri­bu­tions pay con­tri­bu­tions to the un­employ­ment insurance, these two groups are examined here. All employed with social insurance con­tri­bu­tions include persons with full social in­surance con­tri­bu­tions as well as low-paid employed and short-term employees with reduced social in­surance contributions.

Self-employed paying contributions to unemploy­ment in­surance on a vo­lun­tary basis are not taken into account.

For methodological information on the Employ­ment Statistics please refer to the web­site of the Federal Employ­ment Agency.