"The generally positive employment development in the Ger-man labor market over the last two decades has been ac-companied by a qualitative change in employment struc-tures. While the middle of the job market has stagnated, employment has grown particularly within low-paid and less-skilled jobs, as well as within the high-wage sector. These tendencies toward polarization have been relatively weak; however, there is sign of an increasing labor-market cleavage, particularly with regard to the expansion of atypi-cal employment. These developments can be attributed to the substitution of routine tasks in the course of technologi-cal change and globalization, as well as to institutional changes in the German labor market since the early 2000s."

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