The German economic report: Talk is cheap, unlike everything else

The German government has presented its ‘Annual Report on the Economy’ (‘Jahreswirtschaftsbericht’) for 2026. Given the topic, it is not a long document – 136 pages – and if you expect exciting ideas, you will be disappointed.

That’s because this is, of course, a thoroughly political work, in the worst sense of the term: It is produced by a plethora of German bureaucrats from various agencies, collaborating and compromising under the leadership of the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. If “written by committee” entails being anodyne, this is written by whole ministries.

And yet: Look closely, and – badly politicized as it is – Berlin’s Annual Economy Report and the way it was spun for the public can tell you a lot about Germany as it really is now, and why that is a rather sad picture with little hope for quick improvement.

The report demonstrates once again that the current hyper-Centrist coalition government of mainstream pseudo-conservatives (CDU/CSU) and mainstream pseudo-social-democrats (SPD) has no idea how to turn things around.

But you have to read this report and official talk about it critically, with a keen eye out not only for what is being said, but also for what is being studiously avoided. In the bad old days of the last century’s Cold War, Western observers loved to practice “Kremlinology,” that is, interpreting the politics of the former Soviet Union from small signs and big silences. Let’s apply some “Berlinology” to the Annual Report.

Unsurprisingly, at her official press conference, German Minister of the Economy Katherina Reiche from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party did her best to put on a brave face: She opened her remarks by boldly trying to sell expected growth for 2026 of one (in figures: 1.0) percent and an even more fragile projection of 1.3 percent in 2017 as an economic “recovery.” Reiche also highlighted a few (very) short-term improvements and offered a pep talk about inflation and real wages, based on projections that may well turn out false.

Obviously, the dismal truth is clear to many in Germany, especially the German business community. The head of the Federal Association of German Industry has been direct: “The expected economic recovery is small and remains fragile.” That is a typical voice. Google and you’ll find more.  

If what Reiche has to offer is the government’s case for optimism, it must be desperate and it is not fooling anyone. Even Reiche had to admit that the 2026 “growth”  projection, if that’s the word, already represent a downward correction of Berlin’s promises last fall.

As its title indicates, the report’s main purpose is to look ahead. But it also offers a summary of recent developments, mostly during the first half of the 2020s. That look back is no comforting stroll down memory lane. Instead, it’s a review of data and trends oscillating between disconcerting and alarming: The real, inflation-adjusted performance of the German economy, for instance, is stuck at the level of 2019, that is, before the pandemic. Real wages are doing worse: they are slightly below where they were in 2019. Meanwhile, just as the government’s Annual Report is coming out, official unemployment has increased to over 3 million, the worst figure for a January since 2014.

Digitalization and traditional infrastructure more generally have long suffered from a lack of public investment, the Annual Report admits. Indeed, infrastructure, such as roads, railways, power grids, and bridges, has not only been starved of investment but been neglected so badly that its substance is crumbling.

If things are deteriorating, people are not holding up so well either, at least in terms of numbers – the demography of the labor force is not a happy story. As the report explains, Germany has been running in place; the whole modest increase in the labor force since 2023 has been due to, in essence, immigration. Since “native” Germans are on a solid downward trend when it comes to having children, the future looks even grimmer. In the decades ahead, the Annual Report predicts, there is a high probability (read ‘certainty’) that the labor force will shrink further even if supplemented with more immigrants.

Indeed, a recent article in Germany’s mainstream central organ “Spiegel” admits that if Germany now has an active labor force of about 46 million (including part-time jobs), this figure is bound to decrease substantially, perhaps even dramatically, over the next decades. In a scenario of no further immigration and no change in the share of Germans participating in the labor force, it will fall to as few as 31 million by 2060. If a larger share (of the remaining Germans) joins the labor force (including a shift to full-time) and 100,000 immigrants are added annually, it will only ebb to 38 million.

Only in the politically unlikely case of an increase in labor force participation and 400,000 fresh immigrants every single year could the labor force stabilize at, in essence, just above the current level. Put differently, the virtually certain mid-term future is a demographically squeezed labor force, which in turn will exert even more pressure on the already greatly strained systems of social security as well as healthcare and retirement benefits.

But back to the present and the near future: As the Annual Report reveals, there is plenty to worry about there as well. Probably the single most disturbing point is the fact that of that already diminutive one percent growth predicted for 2026, no less than two thirds will be due to state expenditure. Put differently, Germany will have almost no growth – and what it will have comes from a massive, debt-driven state intervention, namely the military – or perhaps rather militarist – Keynesianism introduced at the beginning of last year.

Meanwhile private investments are not even stagnating, they're decreasing: since 2019, they have shrunk by 11 percent, according to Minister Reiche herself. All of this amounts to a recipe not for kickstarting genuine, sustainable growth but for a typical state-budget-ruining, inflation-boosting flash-in-the-pan effect.

Help will not come from outside either. On the contrary, as the Annual Report also recognizes, the international conditions for Germany’s manufacturing-and-export economy have been getting much tougher, to a substantial extent because of Berlin’s so-called “allies” in the US and their “tariff policy.” That is, in plain English, economic warfare against their EU vassals, very much including Berlin.

Don’t get me wrong. In principle, a good dose of Keynesian state splurging can help economies. But the circumstances have to be right. They are not right in Germany, for reasons including demographic crisis, the absence of a rational immigration policy, persistent bureaucracy, and lack of serious structural reforms, which are much talked about but moving at a glacial place, if at all.

Now, Markus Söder, Bavaria’s leader, conservative grandee, and would-be nemesis of Chancellor Friedrich Merz is already warning that a series of regional elections this year will further paralyze any reform impulses. Söder may have his own selfish reasons to voice such pessimism in public (see above under “would-be nemesis”), but it’s still an all-too-plausible scenario.

Yet the single biggest obstacle to resuscitating the German economy from its coma – whether with or without Keynesianism – is simple: Energy is far too expensive in Germany, crippling both businesses as producers and private households as consumers. The Annual Report admits as much, acknowledging “high energy costs by international comparison.” This is the key bottleneck, and, signally, the report has nothing realistic to say about overcoming it. Because that would mean facing two great, self-harming mistakes that Berlin must first admit and then correct: Giving up nuclear energy at home and needlessly cutting itself off from inexpensive gas from Russia.

As a German economist put it on mainstream news, “we have all lived in a dream world.” Now, he fears, the need for fundamental reforms exceeds what is politically acceptable. Yet talk about reforms is cheap in declining Germany. Everyone is engaging in it, whether while making false promises or complaining. The “dream world” that really needs a hard reality-check, even if it hurts, is geopolitical: namely the silly illusion that Germany can thrive without a reasonable, productive relationship with Russia.

There are some faint signs that, all too slowly, things may be moving in this respect: Under Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, the new-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) – the current government’s worst nightmare – has long been clear about the need to re-open Nord Stream and to repair the relationship with Moscow in general. Even uber-Russophobe Merz has dopped some hints that a normalization with Russia would not be a bad thing. Hear, hear. The Annual Report, too, admits – in passing – that an end of the Ukraine War would be good for the German economy.

But curb your expectations. The traditional parties show no sign of being ready to actually do anything about their very shy talk about a better future with Russia. The AfD, meanwhile, is still far from breaking through into the federal government in Berlin. Even if it should, there is no guarantee that its leaders will be brave enough to really rebuild bridges with Russia. They would face massive pressure – by fair means and foul – to backpaddle and become reliable, self-sacrificing NATO-EU team players, that is, to give up on a foreign policy independent enough to protect German national interests by facilitating a new Ostpolitik.

Sadly, the German economy suffers from more than one pathology. But without resolving the problem of politically overpriced energy, there is no saving it. As long as extreme hostility to Russia and masochistic support for Ukraine remain axioms in Berlin, this crucial problem will remain unsolvable.