At the end of 2024, the German press reported that the median salary of immigrants of Indian origin in the country was at a level higher than the median salary of the population with German nationality. The news was based on a study published by the German Economic Institute (PLÜNNECKE, 2024). In 2021, I had already drawn attention to this characteristic among the population of Brazilian nationality in Germany, namely the relatively high value of the median salary (AUTHOR, 2021). Plünnecke focuses on India, but he also highlights the Brazilian population among those with the highest median salaries in Germany. In my study, I emphasized that gender issues were involved in this new and increasingly relevant characteristic of the Brazilian population in Germany, and that such a feature was being driven by German policies aimed at attracting foreign labor for specific areas of the labor market. Plünnecke also highlights the role of employment concentration areas as an explanation for the high salaries of some foreign populations, yet he makes no reference to gender issues. Given the similarities and differences in the salary profiles of the Indian and Brazilian populations in Germany, I sought to construct a comparison of aspects of the labor profiles of these two migrant populations as a way of better outlining the labor profile of the Brazilian population. For this purpose, in addition to the comparative analysis of data from the Indian and Brazilian populations, I also included data from the Thai population in the study. The Thai population was included because it is strongly marked by a characteristic that may once have been the main demographic feature of the Brazilian population in Germany, namely its high rate of feminization. The results indicate, on the one hand, a movement of the profile of the Brazilian population toward the migratory profile of the Indian population, marked by an upward curve in migrant entries, a young and qualified migration, endogamous marital relations, and high salaries in jobs in STEM areas. On the other hand, different rhythms of growth suggest that the profile of the Brazilian population still tends toward another configuration, with emphasis on the persistence of gender disparities in the world of work.
Glauco Vaz Feijó (Thu,) studied this question.