Growth in Germany - what is going wrong, what could be better?

Article by Dr. Christian Jasperneite

For many years, Germany has been growing less than almost every other major economy on the planet. One of the main reasons for this is the extremely low labor input in Germany. There is no other major industrialized country in the world where the average working person works less than in Germany. The number of hours worked per inhabitant per year is also at an extremely low level internationally. 

Even the total absolute volume of working hours in the national economy has only risen marginally in Germany over the last 25 years - despite immigration and higher labor market participation by women. Here too, Germany is lagging far behind internationally. Since, in contrast to many other countries, labor productivity has barely risen at the same time, weak growth is almost mathematically self-evident. 

From a rational point of view, our weak growth could be alleviated to a considerable extent by working a little more collectively in Germany. More on this in our current issue of “Economic Situation & Strategy”.