What Low Youth Unemployment Rates Don’t Tell Us: Young Germans’ Paths to Economic Self-Sufficiency

Achieving economic self-sufficiency can be considered an important milestone in the transition to adulthood, one which possibly carries more weight than the traditional milestones of decades past (in particular, buying a home, getting married, and having children). As has been well-documented, the path to adulthood for many of today’s young people can be a difficult one to traverse, often involving detours and stumbling blocks. What stands out in the various accounts of successful transitions to adulthood is the importance of labor market participation. At first glance, Germany, a country with comparatively very low youth unemployment rates, would appear to be a kind of paradise for young people. At the same time, it is well-researched that certain at-risk groups, e.g. people with migrant backgrounds and/or low socio-economic origins, face a heightened risk of unemployment, economic inactivity, and school failure, all of which severely constrain one’s chances of achieving any form of economic self-sufficiency. We are also faced with a situation in which younger people disproportionally hold precarious forms of employment; in other words, labor market participation is, for many young people, not sufficient for attaining economic self-sufficiency. We explore these phenomena using a unique online-survey of more than 3000 young adults in Germany in order to empirically assess widespread assumptions and provide a more nuanced picture of the situation of young people in Germany.