Germans earn 23% more than migrant workers, data reveals

An information request submitted by the AfD has revealed the income gap between German nationals and migrant workers at the end of 2025.

Who earns more, Germans or internationals?

At the end of 2025, working German citizens earned a median of 4.396 euros per month before tax, compared with migrant residents’ median monthly income of 3.358 euros. The figures reveal a 23,6 percent pay gap between German nationals and migrant workers.

Median income is the amount at which an equal number of full-time employees earn more and an equal number earn less. Using the median rather than the average means that extremely high earners do not skew the figure upwards.

According to the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (Bundesarbeitsministerium), migrants not only have a lower median income, but they are also more often in low-paid work.

30,6 percent of migrants in Germany are currently in low-paid jobs, compared to just 12,3 percent of German citizens. Jobs are considered low-paid when employees earn less than two-thirds of the German median wage.

Qualifications and German mean higher pay

According to the Bundesarbeitsministerium and the federal government, how much employees earn is still largely connected to education, qualifications and work experience.

Figures from the Federal Employment Office (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) show that in 2025, people without a professional qualification earned a median income of 3.133 euros, while full-time employees with a qualification earned a median of 4.069 euros per month. Among academics, the median income increases to 6.146 euros per month.

Another study by the German Economic Institute (IW) in Cologne found that the better migrant workers' German skills, the more they are paid in Germany. “Language acquisition is the key to successful integration into the German workplace,” IW report author Wido Geis-Thöne explained.

The 2019 study concluded that more funding should be designated to continuing education opportunities for Germans without a migrant background and to increasing the quality of integration courses for migrants in Germany.

The current CDU/CSU-SPD government has not heeded this advice, and plans to cut state funding for integration courses from over one billion euros in 2026 to around 590 million euros in 2027.