The problem here is, no amount of pressure can force people into non-existing jobs.
I myself was searching for 10 full months and my chances should in theory be better than most people's...
I have excellent grades throughout my record. My Grade from German "Abitur" (equivalent to Americal college diploma) was a straight 1.0, (that's a clean A for you Americans ;), my Biology Diploma a 1.2. I finished a PhD thesis in experimental cancer research with "magna cum laude" and had worked for 3 years in one of the world's leading tissue engineering companies.
What help is that, when you apply for a Job in a town called "Hechingen" (small hamlet at the end of nowhere :P ) and you still have 102 competitors?
When applying here in Freiburg, I had 363 competitors for one bloody position.
I finally found something 2 months before time was up (the whole biotechnology business is undergoing a crisis...) by sheer... no, not luck. By knowing someone who worked at my old company, who knew someone else at the new company and heard that someone there was pregnant :wacko:
Oh, and I'm 36. Try finding a job in Germany when you're over 45 and you know what people talk about. It's plain impossible.
At the same time we have 5 million (actually, realistically 6.5 million) people unemployed, there are now 850.000 millionaires in Germany. More than ever before.
The average industry worker, who produced a value of 136.000⬠in 1982 produced an average value of 300.000⬠in 2004 and - guess - earned less and paid higher fees and taxes.
We are, sadly, catching up rapidly with the US when the size of the gap between the poor and the rich is concerned. And it's not as if there's less money to go around than 30 years ago - when we could easily afford our social secutrity system. German economy has never ceased to grow. The wealth has just become much less evenly spread.
Large companies increase profits by increasing productivity, then firing people. With the fear of unemployment they blackmail those who remain into accepting worse and worse terms and working overtime. Then they weasel out of most of their taxes, and keep complaining about the high price of work in Germany (and the mein reason it's so high is the costs of the unemployment THEY created and the high tax pressure on the average citizen - as they have to cover for the companies who pay less and less)
So the whole system creates huge profits for a few winners but doesn't work as a whole. And the way out is to punish the losers harder ?
I myself was searching for 10 full months and my chances should in theory be better than most people's...
I have excellent grades throughout my record. My Grade from German "Abitur" (equivalent to Americal college diploma) was a straight 1.0, (that's a clean A for you Americans ;), my Biology Diploma a 1.2. I finished a PhD thesis in experimental cancer research with "magna cum laude" and had worked for 3 years in one of the world's leading tissue engineering companies.
What help is that, when you apply for a Job in a town called "Hechingen" (small hamlet at the end of nowhere :P ) and you still have 102 competitors?
When applying here in Freiburg, I had 363 competitors for one bloody position.
I finally found something 2 months before time was up (the whole biotechnology business is undergoing a crisis...) by sheer... no, not luck. By knowing someone who worked at my old company, who knew someone else at the new company and heard that someone there was pregnant :wacko:
Oh, and I'm 36. Try finding a job in Germany when you're over 45 and you know what people talk about. It's plain impossible.
At the same time we have 5 million (actually, realistically 6.5 million) people unemployed, there are now 850.000 millionaires in Germany. More than ever before.
The average industry worker, who produced a value of 136.000⬠in 1982 produced an average value of 300.000⬠in 2004 and - guess - earned less and paid higher fees and taxes.
We are, sadly, catching up rapidly with the US when the size of the gap between the poor and the rich is concerned. And it's not as if there's less money to go around than 30 years ago - when we could easily afford our social secutrity system. German economy has never ceased to grow. The wealth has just become much less evenly spread.
Large companies increase profits by increasing productivity, then firing people. With the fear of unemployment they blackmail those who remain into accepting worse and worse terms and working overtime. Then they weasel out of most of their taxes, and keep complaining about the high price of work in Germany (and the mein reason it's so high is the costs of the unemployment THEY created and the high tax pressure on the average citizen - as they have to cover for the companies who pay less and less)
So the whole system creates huge profits for a few winners but doesn't work as a whole. And the way out is to punish the losers harder ?
With magic, you can turn a frog into a prince...
With science, you can turn a frog into a Ph.D. ...
and still keep the frog you started with.