Unemployed

Number of Hartz-IV-duration recipients declined only in the East

More than two million people in Germany are permanently reliant on state support. Although the job centres efforts to you, he moved a little.

Despite increased efforts by the job centre, the number of people receiving four or more years Hartz IV has fallen to last in the East – part, surprisingly strong. According to the data of the Federal employment Agency (BA) the number between December 2014 and December 2015 nationwide by only 0.8 per cent, to 2,576 million. In December 2014, 2,598 million people had purchased four years or longer so-called Hartz-IV-rule services.

The Federal Agency disagreed with this at the same time, a report of the “Bild”newspaper, in the of a decline of 7.9 percent. In the sheet called data, derived from outdated statistics, said a BA spokesman in Nuremberg, Germany.

The strongest decline in Saxony

In East Germany, by contrast, the number of permanent recipients decreased year on year by 3.4 percent. Most of the decline was minus 6.1 in Saxony, where 61.6 per cent of all Hartz IV-were recipients of four years or longer dependent on cash benefits from your jobcenter. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the decline was 4.9 percent, 60.9 percent of the Hartz-IV-recipients of the aid for longer than three years.

In Brandenburg, the decline of 4.7 per cent (the share of the long-time-recipients: 63.9 percent.) Easily, the number of long-term recipients in Hamburg (plus 1.7 percent) and Saarland (0.4 per cent) rose. In the rest of Germany has changed by contrast, the number hardly.

The declines in the East are due according to the findings of the Federal Agency primarily to the fact that many of the long-term unemployed are recently retired. Conceivable is also, that some of the victims are moved to the hopeless job search in the West, said a BA spokesman.

uh/stu (dpa)