As of April 30, 2024, approximately 1.1 million Ukrainian war refugees were registered in Germany, according to the German Interior Ministry. Around 350,000 of them are children and young people under the age of 18. Approximately two-thirds of the adult refugees are women. There are around 256,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 in Germany.
The German government reported on March 29, 2024, that only 114,000 of the 750,000 individuals eligible to work were currently in regular employment. The employment rate among Ukrainians in Germany stood at 15.2 percent at the end of March. By April 24, this figure had risen to 15.7 percent, according to German public media. At the same time, it is estimated that approximately 5 percent of Ukrainians in Germany work occasional or very low-hour jobs that do not qualify them for contributions to the German social security system.
If the vast majority of Ukrainians in Germany are not working, the question arises of how they sustain themselves there. Unlike refugees from other countries, Ukrainians in Germany receive citizen's benefits rather than asylum-seeker benefits.
The primary source of income for most Ukrainians is the so-called citizen's income, which is intended to cover the basic needs of a resident of Germany.
The citizen's income to which Ukrainians in Germany are entitled was increased in January 2024. This means that single individuals can receive 563 euros per month, married couples 506 euros per person, and children between 357 and 471 euros depending on age. These are subsistence amounts. Housing costs are covered by the German social system.
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Following the announcement of the Ukrainian mobilization law, the debate about Ukrainians in Germany erupted anew. In recent days — June 15-16 — and just ahead of the conference of state interior ministers to be held June 19-21 in Potsdam, its chairman, Brandenburg Interior Minister Michael Stuebgen (CDU), questioned the citizen's income decisions for Ukrainians, particularly for those who are obligated to perform military service in their home country.
"It makes no sense to talk about supporting Ukraine in the best possible way while subsidizing Ukrainians who have left the country,"
the CDU politician told the editorial network Redaktionsnetz Deutschland (RND).
Thorsten Frei, parliamentary secretary of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, also calls for cutting citizen's benefits for Ukrainian refugees. In his view, the high level of social benefits in Germany is creating problems with mobilization in Ukraine.
