> Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has hailed Germany's "job miracle"
> after whittling the jobless rate down to 7.6% of the work force, compared
> with unemployment levels of about 10% in the U.S. and France.
One has to keep in mind, though, that one of the tricks of the Hartz IV reforms is playing games with who is counted as officially "unemployed". As a Hartz IV recipient, you are essentially at the mercy of your caseworker in terms of accepting workfare type measures, such as picking up trash in a public park for 1 Euro an hour, or being shoved into a useless "qualification" program where you learn things like how to write a job application. The entire time you are stuck in such a measure, you are not counted as unemployed.
And that's not even to speak of the people who get kicked off the rolls for refusing to go along with this kind of thing.
Furthermore, keep in mind there is no legally mandated minimum wage in Germany. An employer can hire you at 2 euro an hour, and if your income as a result is lower than what you would be getting as completely unemployed, you can apply for "supplementary" Hartz IV in order to meet the difference. But by obtaining public assistance in this way, you are also subject to **all** the stipulations that a Hartz IV recipient is subject to, meaning having to ask permission from the Jobcenter when you want to move apartments, having to notify the Jobcenter when you are out of town for a few days, etc.
In other words, slavery is legal in Germany, even for the nominally "employed".