As ties fray, Berlin and Washington are trading barbs over their decline, using each other’s crises to dodge their own mounting failures
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told an audience of local Catholics in the southwestern city of Wuerzburg that he no longer advises young people to travel to the United States for work and study, citing the rapidly changing “social climate” in the country.
Merz, who has served as Chancellor of Germany since May 2025, said “I would not recommend to my children today that they go to the US to get an education and to work” – a comment that attracted robust applause from the audience.
The chancellor’s concern focused primarily on the job market in the US, saying “the social climate that has suddenly developed” in the US had become a source of concern and argued that “even the best educated in America have great difficulty in finding a job.”
“I am a great admirer of America,” Merz added, eliciting laughter from the audience, “but right now my admiration is not increasing.”
New data shows that the German chancellor is not wrong in his prognosis of the US labor market. For the first time since Gallup began measuring the life evaluation of the American workforce, more US workers are struggling in their lives (49%) than thriving (46%).
“This contrasts with 2022 and 2023, when the reverse was true, with the share of US employees considered ‘thriving’ staying in the low-to-mid 50s – a mark of relative resilience after pandemic disruptions. After staying steady between 57% and 60% from 2009 to 2019, the thriving rate among workers fell to 55% in 2020 before rebounding in 2021 then steadily decreasing after that,” Gallup reported.
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