x.com/AndrewHammel1/status/2109577167071797707

This sentence overstates both sides of the comparison.

Official Destatis data for all employees in Germany show 41.742 million employees in 2022 and 42.214 million in 2025. Official Destatis data for public-service employees show 3.2869 million in 2022 and 3.4949 million in 2025. Using those official totals, employees outside the public service increased from 38.4551 million to 38.7191 million — an increase of about 264,000, not a loss of 600,000.

The post also treats a rise in education/health/social/public-administration branches as if it were a rise in actual government employment. But Germany’s official WZ 2008 industry classification is activity-based, not ownership-based: Destatis explicitly says it does not distinguish by ownership, legal organization, or operating form. So jobs counted in sectors such as education, health, and social work are not automatically government jobs; they can be public, nonprofit, or private employers.

And if you look at actual public-service headcount, the official increase is much smaller than the post implies: Destatis reports 5.206 million public-service employees in 2022 and 5.4751 million in 2025, an increase of about 269,000, not 700,000.

So the sentence is misleading in two ways:

1. it turns selected branch losses into a claim about all “private industry”; and
2. it turns broad activity categories into a claim about “government-related”/government employment.