If you feel like the cost of just about everything is more expensive, or that you just can't afford as much as you used to, you're probably onto something.
Most employees in Germany have lost purchasing power over the course of the past five years, according to a recent report by Deutschlandfunk based on figures from the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).
Inflation in Germany was 21.8 percent in the years following the Covid pandemic, from 2020 to 2025. During the same period, the median income in the country increased by just 11 percent.
This means that most salaried workers in the country have lost significant purchasing power and prosperity during that time.
In 2020, the median income in Germany was €26,008. Five years later, this had risen to €28,913.
The median income marks exactly the middle: half of all workers in the country earn more, and the other half less. Note that the median salary in Germany is lower than the average salary, which skews higher because the large salaries of the country's top earners weigh the figure in that direction.
The median salary is generally a better figure for getting sense of what most people are really earning.
The above figures represent incomes from all types of workers in the country, including the self-employed and freelancers.
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Regardless of how your own income compares to the above figures, if it has not kept up with inflation, you've effectively lost purchasing power, which is a measure of how much you can buy with the income you get.
More inflation expected
This comes as an escalating war in Iran has caused oil and fuel prices to spike in recent days, and has renewed fears that high inflation for food prices and other products is likely to follow.
The price of diesel and E10 fuel both spiked above €2 per litre this week, having jumped significantly after conflict escalated in Iran and surrounding states.
With highly trafficked air spaces and sea shipping lanes heavily restricted -- including the Strait of Hormuz which plays an important role in oil and gas supplies -- prices on everything from fuel to consumer goods to travel are expected to rise.
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German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) has threatened oil companies with consequences if they tried to capitalize on the Iran war, and Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche (CDU) has announced a review of prices.
But with crude oil prices on the rise globally, it will likely prove that there is little that German politicians can do to keep prices from rising.
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