When I saw the chart I thought: "Well, Germany doesn't look too bad, funny that the people in Eastern Germany always complain."

I am from Brandenburg originally and am very surprised that Berlins unemployment rate is higher than Brandenburg's?! I checked statista[1][2] and indeed, it is. When I grew up it was around 18%.

1: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/2519/umfrage/... 2: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/762452/umfrag...

People moving away from the countryside to cities could be a big factor. That leaves rural areas with a lot of older folks (that don't count as unemployed) while jobseekers are in bigger cities. Why should you be unemployed in rural Brandenburg when you could as well move to Berlin where there's a higher chance for a job? That could also explain why the rate in Northeastern Germany has decreased that much, both areas are mostly rural.

I think it could do with an extra dimension for eastern Germany, e.g. wages or relative wealth; having low unemployment is good, but if there's a big wage / wealth discrepancy between east and west there's still room for improvement.

I would expect that the discrepancy that matters - wages vs. cost of living - has much bigger difference if you go from East Germany to Poland, Czech Republic or Slovakia, rather than in comparison to West Germany. I.e. purchasing power drops much more when you go east, compared to going west.

That’s the whole debate, by forcing people to take one euro jobs, you lower the unemployment stats while increasing your poverty stats.