Inequality: In the catering industry, wages are rising particularly sharply

For decades, industrial workers in this country were at the forefront of general wage developments.

Together with the many successful world market companies, whether car manufacturers or machine builders, they too benefited from globalization.

However, this also had the effect of amplifying the statistical wage inequality between men and women, since a disproportionately large number of men work in industry.

Now, however, an interesting shift is looming: wage growth in industry is slowing while its pace is picking up sharply in areas such as hospitality and elderly care.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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The annual wage statistics of the Federal Employment Agency, the new edition of which is now available, provide a picture of this.

Mechanical and automotive engineering occupations: up 8.2 percent.

Gastronomy: plus 13.5 percent.

Cleaning professions: plus 16 percent.

Elderly care: plus 25.7 percent.

These are the increases in median monthly wages for full-time work from 2016 to 2021. The data is based on official company social security notifications.

Triggers: labor shortages and minimum wages

The short-term comparison from 2021 to 2020 is similar.

Machinery and vehicle technology: up 1.8 percent.

Cleaning professions: plus 4.2 percent.

Elderly care: plus 5.2.

Gastronomy: plus 5.7.

The former pioneering role of the industry, however, becomes clear in a long-term comparison, as permitted by the official wage statistics: In the years 2005 to 2019, the wages in machine and vehicle construction rose by a good 45 percent, in the hospitality industry only by 32 percent.

In health and social services, which also includes care for the elderly, it was 37 percent.

Two factors appear to be converging in the recent shifts: labor shortages and increased policy intervention through minimum wages are driving wage levels up in previously lagging sectors.

Industry, on the other hand, which had already slipped into recession in 2019, is now coming under additional pressure from restrictions on world trade and structural change in the name of climate protection.

Nevertheless, there are still considerable wage differences between the sectors and occupational fields - which, however, are partly related to differences in the qualification level of the employees.

In mechanical and automotive engineering professions, an average of 3730 euros gross per month was paid for full-time work in 2021, as the Federal Agency explains.

For geriatric nurses there was 3062 euros.

In the cleaning professions, on the other hand, it was only 2099 euros and in the catering trade 1992 euros.

In the fall, the IG Metall and IG BCE trade unions will compete in their major collective bargaining rounds to get more out of industrial workers.

However, they will hardly reach the pace that currently prevails in the area of ​​the minimum wage.

This increases to 12 euros per hour in October;

that is 25 percent more than a year earlier.

And it shapes the wage rounds in sectors whose collective bargaining level is only slightly higher.

In the florist trade, IG Bau and employers have just agreed on an increase of 17.4 percent, albeit spread over two years.

In the metal and electrical industry, IG Metall “only” raises a demand of 8 percent.

Wage gap between Germans and foreigners is growing

The changing of the guard in wage policy is also causing the statistically defined low-wage sector to shrink further.

According to the Federal Agency, the proportion of those affected fell to its lowest level since the turn of the millennium in 2021: 18.1 percent of full-time employees earned wages that were below two-thirds of the general average wage.

That was 2344 euros last year.

For comparison: in 2011, 21.1 percent were still working below the then threshold of 1868 euros.

With the sharp increase in wages in sectors in which many women traditionally work, the average salary level for women is also approaching that of men.

According to the evaluation, the mean full-time earnings for men were recently 3,649 euros and thus 10.6 percent higher than in 2016. Women came to an average of 3,276 euros – an increase of 15.6 percent since 2016. The gap thus shrank from 468 to 373 euros .

However, the extent to which regional economic structures influence this “gap” can be seen in Brandenburg, for example.

There, in 2021, the average salary of women was 133 euros higher than that of men.

Another difference, on the other hand, which is less the focus of political debates, is growing steadily according to the statistics: the wage gap between foreigners and Germans on the local labor market.

In 2014, it averaged 576 euros a month for full-time work and has grown to 915 euros by 2021.

This can be explained primarily by the fact that although many immigrants have found employment since then, the proportion of those with higher qualifications was below the average of previous years.