German Federal Labour Minister Olaf Scholz

While about 13% of German residents live at or under the poverty line, defined as 60% of median income or €781 a month after tax, a further 13% live above that threshold only because they receive state benefits, according to the report, which was published by the Federal Labour Ministry on Monday.

Labour Minister Olaf Scholz is pressing for a universal minimum wages, pension growth and higher taxes on top incomes to compensate for the fall in real average incomes.

``We need to ensure that wages are adequate,''Scholz told reporters in Berlin on Monday, adding that the number of poor had ``stagnated'' since an earlier review in 2005.

The first poverty report, published in 1998, found that 12% of Germans were poor. Germany last issued a poverty report in 2005, when it said that 11% of residents lived in poverty. That was a time when growth was 0.8% and unemployment reached a post-World War II high. 

Last week, Germany reported that its economy expanded by 1.5% in the first quarter. The economy grew 2.5% and unemployment fell to a 15-year low in 2007. Growth in 2006 was 2.95, the highest since 2000.

``What's particularly depressing for me is that the number of people is growing who are in work yet face the risk of poverty,''Scholz said in an interview published Monday in the Bild-am-Sonntag newspaper.

Also on Monday, the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis)  reported that 683,000 persons in-migrated to Germany in 2007 and 635,000 persons out-migrated. This results in net inward migration of 48,000 persons.

That was 21,000 in-migrations more and 4,000 out-migrations less than in 2006. Hence net inward migration more than doubled compared to the previous year.

In 2006, it recorded a 71% decline on 2005.