"U-turn" demanded

23 percent of Germans lack money for vacations

According to data from the EU statistics authority Eurostat, 22.6 percent of people in Germany lack the money even for a one-week vacation trip each year. At 43.2 percent, the proportion is highest among single people with children. But even among families with two adults and three or more children (31.3%), an above-average number cannot afford a one-week vacation.

Sahra Wagenknecht, member of the Bundestag, requested the figures from the Federal Statistical Office. The proportion of the population for whom a one-week vacation is too expensive increased by 0.4 percentage points from 2022 to 2023. In general, single people (30.4 percent) are more likely than couples (16.8 percent) to have too little money for a time-out, according to the figures.

"Shameful development"
These figures have also risen slightly. Overall, this also applies to households without children who are unable to treat themselves to a vacation trip: The proportion grew from 21.1 to 22.0 percent. For households with children, the proportion fell slightly from 23.7 to 23.5 percent, but was still above the average.

The development is shameful, Wagenknecht commented. "Almost one in four people can't even recover for a week." The leader of the new Alliance party, Sahra Wagenknecht, saw this as an "indicator of the decline of our country under the traffic light".

U-turn demanded
The federal government had made millions of citizens poorer. "We need a turnaround in economic and social policy in Germany," demanded Wagenknecht.

Eurostat data shows that the proportion of the population with too little money for a one-week vacation has fluctuated at around one-fifth in recent years. In 2020, it was 22.4 percent, then 19.9 percent in 2021, 22.2 percent the following year and 22.6 percent last year.