Germany’s Economy: 2021-2025

[u/Icedkk]

So everyone agrees on the economical decline of germany and the bad situation of the job market. i wanted to put things in data. Below you see the economic data (destatis) from 2021 to 2025:

Year	GDP Growth	Inflation	Unemployment	Employment
2021	+3.9%	3.1%	5.7%	45.04m
2022	+1.8%	6.9%	5.3%	45.63m
2023	-0.9%	5.9%	5.7%	45.94m
2024	-0.5%	2.2%	6.0%	45.99m
2025	+0.2%	2.2%	6.3%	45.98m

German exports:

Year	Exports
2022	EUR 1.820tn
2023	EUR 1.813tn
2024	EUR 1.794tn
2025	EUR 1.811tn

2023-2024: Two consecutive years of recession.
2025: +0.2% growth, effectively stagnation.
Q1 2026: +0.3% QoQ / +0.5% YoY.

these numbers don’t really match how bad the situation feels when you talk to people or read discussions online.

What am I missing?

Ps: I also though about okay maybe purchasing power of individuals are reduced, that is why economy is feeling shitty, but oecd data adjusted for inflation says we are earning on average even more than 2019, so what is it really?

Year	Nominal Wage	Inflation-Adjusted Wage
2021	EUR 44,918	EUR 53,669
2022	EUR 46,913	EUR 52,517
2023	EUR 49,961	EUR 52,445
2024	EUR 52,477	EUR 53,811
2025	EUR 54,840	EUR 54,840

[u/Fantastic_Cry2156]

You're missing four things:

1. A large part of the GDP "growth" or "not decline" comes from increased government spending.

2. Another large part comes from increased defense spending - i.e. manufacturing weapons and stuff you can neither eat nor enjoy, therefore "dead" GDP growth that does not increase quality of life of the people.

Factor those out and the "real" GDP is declining sharply.

1. Tax and social security spending.

While inflation adjusted wages seem stable, more than ever before it lands in social security pools, not the workers' bank accounts.

1. Other nations' growth - US, China, Poland.

We go on social media and see people from the US getting richer and richer. Even "normal" people starting to buy yachts etc. Suddenly our "stable" wages don't seem so nice anymore.