The presence of enterprises with high wage levels guarantees stable incomes for local residents
A person working in Wolfsburg (Lower Saxony) for a salary of 5,000 euros would be among the low earners among local workers, whereas in Görlitz (Saxony) a "gross" monthly income of 2,400 euros is enough to belong to the half of the population with high incomes.
However, as "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, it is far from just a matter of the geographical location of a settlement; there are plenty of "poor" cities even in the old states. The main factor in terms of income is the presence of enterprises with high wage levels. In Germany, this primarily includes the automotive industry, and it is no surprise that the leader in the income ranking of its workers is Wolfsburg, the birthplace of the Volkswagen Group, which regularly competes with Japan's Toyota for the title of the world's largest car manufacturer.
The Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) recently presented data on earnings in various German cities for 2019. The comparison of the obtained figures is based on median income—an indicator that better reflects the situation than the average salary. The latter is more dependent on fluctuations from a statistical perspective, such as the highest and lowest incomes, while median income is the value at which 50% of the statistical sample have incomes below and 50% have incomes above that figure.
The average median income of a German resident working a full workweek was 3,401 euros gross in 2019: half of residents earn less, the other half earn more. Regional differences are enormous, the border between west and east is noticeable, and western metropolises stand out, as well as Wolfsburg and Bavarian Ingolstadt, where the VW Group's subsidiary Audi is located. Both cities top the top ten leaders in median income: in Wolfsburg it is 5,089 euros, and in Ingolstadt, to belong to the half of local workers who earn above average, one must earn at least 5,004 euros "gross."
Third on the list is Erlangen (Bavaria), where Siemens Group enterprises are located, and the median income of residents reached 4,907 euros last year. Fourth is Böblingen (Baden-Württemberg), where the wealthy earn more than 4,809 euros thanks to another automotive group, Daimler.
The automotive industry, which employs about 850,000 German residents, is not the only sector with high wages. The chemical and technological industry also rightfully belongs to the most generous employers: it is no coincidence that the top five leading cities is rounded out by Ludwigshafen (Rhineland-Palatinate), the location of the BASF Group.
The top ten list of earnings leaders also includes the capitals of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, Stuttgart and Munich, Hesse's largest city Frankfurt am Main, Hessian Darmstadt (home to the world's oldest chemical-pharmaceutical company Merck) and Leverkusen (North Rhine-Westphalia, birthplace of the chemical-pharmacological group Bayer)—median income here ranges between 4,612 and 4,353 euros.
In Berlin, the median income is close to the national average—it is 3,383 euros: half of Berliners earn less per month, and half earn more. All five German regions with the lowest median income are located in the east. The lowest earnings for full-time workers are in Görlitz (Saxony, 2,380 euros), slightly more in the Erzgebirge district (Saxony, 2,390 euros), in the Thuringian districts of Saale-Orla and Altenburger Land (2,420 euros each), and the district of Vorpommern-Rügen (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 2,423 euros).
The Employment Agency's calculations take into account not only the salary itself but also all additional payments—Christmas bonuses and vacation pay, possible profit-sharing, overtime supplements, and any other bonuses the employee may have received from the employer in 2019. All data is collected by place of work, not by place of residence, since workers in Wolfsburg, Erlangen, or Böblingen do not necessarily live there.
However, if you compare the wage figures for those working in a city with the incomes of all city residents, the difference can be quite large. For example, in Ludwigshafen it reaches 1,253 euros. The median income of those employed here is 4,721 euros, while that of residents is 3,468 euros. It is quite obvious that well-off BASF employees prefer to live in the picturesque outskirts outside the city rather than in its industrial center.
Differences in income are large not only by place of residence and work, in old and new states, but also between genders. Calls from politicians and activists still break against dry statistics, although the wage gap between men and women has been narrowing in recent years.
50% of German men earned more than 3,560 euros per month "gross" last year, while the median income of 50% of women exceeded 3,117 euros—12.5% lower. The highest median earnings for men are in Erlangen (5,600 euros), while women earn the most in Wolfsburg (4,439 euros).
Nevertheless, the income gap is particularly high where automotive industry enterprises are located, an industry dominated by male labor. Leaders in the excess of male earnings over female are the Bavarian district of Dingolfing-Landau (home to BMW's largest plant in Germany), Ingolstadt, and Böblingen.
High population incomes are also directly linked to life expectancy—although it is not necessarily highest around automotive plants. Overall, however, statisticians are confident that place of residence affects its duration.
Current data from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock have revealed that residents of Baden-Württemberg and southern Bavaria have the best prospects of living to a very old age in Germany. For the analysis, published in the Ärzteblatt medical journal, information on average life expectancy in all 402 cities and districts of Germany was collected and compared.
The difference is particularly large among men: in Bremerhaven (Bremen) they live on average only 75.8 years, while in the outskirts of Munich – 81.2. For women, the maximum difference between the Salzland district (Saxony-Anhalt, average life expectancy 81.8 years) and the Starnberg district (Bavaria, 85.7) reaches almost four years.
According to the Rostock researchers, factors such as the share of unemployed and the number of social benefit recipients have a direct impact on life expectancy, while income levels, population density, or the number of doctors are less important. The difference between city and countryside is also small, the scientists believe.
Far from the first time, studies confirm that socioeconomic status primarily influences life expectancy. “If the goal is to increase it, we must first take care of those at the very bottom of the social ladder,” says expert Roland Rau.
In Germany, differences in life expectancy are high not only between north and south, but also, as with salaries, between east and west. In the new federal states, there are many more districts where people – both men and women – die earlier. Such regions also exist in the old states, especially many in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The western German cities with the lowest life expectancy include Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, and Essen, located in the Ruhr region.