Bertelsmann-Stiftung: More people in the EU, despite full-time jobs at risk of poverty – TIME ONLINE

The share of people at risk, despite full-time jobs out of poverty, is grown in Europe, according to a study. Their share rose last year to 7.8 percent, as the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh, Germany, informed only by reference to their investigation of the Social Justice Index, in 2016. In 2013, the share stood at 7.2 percent. As reasons for the rising risk of poverty in spite of full employment, the Foundation calls, among other things, a growing low-wage sector and the division of the labour markets in both regular and atypical forms of employment.

Although Europe is recovering slowly from the effects of the economic and financial crisis, compared to the peak of the crisis in 2013, significantly more people are acquiring to be active again. The unemployment rate in the EU fell from 10.4 per cent in 2014 to 9.6 percent in the past year, but still above the value of 7.1 percent in 2008 – well before the crisis. This upward trend in the labour market, not to come at all, so the Foundation is Still is threatened with 118 million, almost one in four EU citizens at risk of poverty or social exclusion, writes the Bertelsmann Foundation. Particularly high shares in Greece, Romania and Bulgaria.

The Foundation is measured by the Index every year since 2008, the social and economic opportunities for people in all EU member States. Although the negative trend of previous years was stopped in the evaluation of social justice in the 28 countries of the European Union. The Social Justice Index, which reached in 2014 with 5.62 its low point, rose 2016 in the EU average to 5.75. Before the economic crisis of 2008, he was still 6,60.

Germany is in the ranking with 6,66 in seventh place in the EU. The top of Sweden occupied with 7,51, tail light remains Greece 3.66. For the study, including poverty, education, labour market, health and intergenerational justice are annually illuminated, on the basis of 36 criteria in six areas.

In Germany, the authors consider the robust labour market and, in particular, the lowest youth unemployment rate in the EU is positive. Problematic is the high risk of poverty as well as problems in the social permeability of the education system. The proportion of the at risk of poverty full-time employees in Germany increased by 5.1 percent (2009) to 7.1 percent (2015). A slight improvement over 2014 (7.5 percent) indicate first effects after the introduction of the minimum wage in 2015, says the study.

The rise of the so-called working poor – so people who are threatened, despite the work of poverty – according to the study authors, in principle, be a cause for concern. “An increasing proportion of people who are not able to permanently make a living from their work, undermines the legitimacy of our economic and social order,” said the Chairman of the Foundation, Aart de Geus.

Especially in southern Europe, young people threaten to be left behind. EU-wide, threatened to around 27 per cent of children and young people up to 18 years-of-poverty or social exclusion. In Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal are, on average, to 34 percent. De Geus warned against this Background: “The growing lack of prospects of many young people is the strengthening of populist movements in the hands.”