A History Shared and Divided. East and West Germany Since the 1970s

TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 245

Table 5.1. Employment and Unemployment in Germany from 1970 to 2010
(the fi gures cited up to and including 1990 are only for West Germany)

Year

Number of

employed

individuals

(in millions)

Employment

rate

Number of

unemployed

individuals

(in millions)

Unemployment
rate
1970 26.8 44.2 percent 0.103 0.4 percent

1975 26.9 43.6 percent 0.613 2.3 percent

1980 28.0 45.4 percent 0.483 1.7 percent
1985 29.7 48.6 percent 1.976 6.7 percent

1990 31.8 50.3 percent 1.423 4.5 percent

1995 41.1 50.3 percent 3.205 7.8 percent

2000 42.9 52.2 percent 3.114 7.3 percent
2005 43.7 53.0 percent 4.506 10.3 percent

2010 43.8 53.6 percent 2.821 6.4 percent

Source: Statistisches Bundesamt, ed., Volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnungen. Inland-
sproduktsberechnung, Lange Reihen ab 1970. Fachserie 18 Reihe 1.5 (Wiesbaden, 2014),
retrieved 25 May 2018, https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Volkswir
tschaftlicheGesamtrechnungen/Inlandsprodukt/InlandsproduktsberechnungLangeReihen
PDF_2180150.pdf?__blob=publicationFile.

The signifi cance of trade unions also varied between East and West
Germany. In the GDR, all employees were de facto required to belong to a
union, namely the FDGB, which was an appendage of the SED until 1989.
In democratic societies, on the other hand, membership in trade unions
is of course voluntary. The social and political signifi cance of a trade
union in such countries is therefore largely determined by the constella-
tions of the labor markets. A high rate of structural unemployment nor-
mally leads to a lasting decline in their infl uence, while full employment
typically strengthens the position of employees. This was very much the
case in West Germany. The trade unions organized within the German
Trade Union Federation (DGB) were at their strongest at the height of
the full employment phase. Accordingly, their membership statistics thus
reached a zenith in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of DGB mem-
bers jumped from 5.4 million in 1950 to 8.0 million in 1981 (7.9 million
in 1989). Reunifi cation brought another boost in membership, bringing
the number of DGB members up to 11.8 million in 1991. Since then,
however, these fi gures have declined steadily, sinking to 9.8 million in
1994/95 and then 8.0 million just fi ve years later. By 2013, the DGB had
only 6.1 million members, which was almost half as many as in 1991.^7
The reasons behind these losses are myriad. In addition to the structural