• In 2025, the number of objections and law suits increased.
• The rate of objections in jointly operated job centers (gE) is 2.1 percent.

In 2025, job centers received 501,667 objections – 78,310 more than in the previous year. During the same period, the number of law suits increased by 4,379 from 48,785 to 53,164.

The most common objections concerned decisions on the calculation of accommodation costs, the cancellation and reimbursement of citizen’s benefits, and the crediting of income or assets. Most objections fell under the “Other” category, which includes, for example, the withholding of citizen’s benefits in the event of overpayments or lack of cooperation.

Most of the law suits concerned accommodation costs, cancellation and reimbursement, and eligibility requirements for SGB II (German Code of Social Law).

Resolved objections and law suits

In 2025, job centers processed and decided on 476,728 objections. 61.14 percent of these were rejected or withdrawn by the beneficiaries themselves. In 147,213 cases, the previous decision was revised. In almost half of the decisions, a new decision could only be made once an appeal had been lodged because omitted documents had been submitted or obligations to cooperate had been fulfilled. There were 42,303 cases of incorrect application of the law by job centers.

The courts were able to conclude 52,858 law suits in total last year. In two-thirds of cases, the job centers’ actions were upheld, while in just under one-third of cases, the law suits resulted in a new decision.

Appeal and law suit rates in jointly operated job centers

The rates of objections and law suits can only be calculated for joint institutions, i.e., job centers that are operated jointly by the Federal Employment Agency of Germany and local authorities. In 2025, they sent out about 21.2 million benefit notices, against which 434,033 objections and 43,169 law suits were filed. The objection rate increased by 0.3 percentage points from 1.8 to 2.1 percent compared to the previous year, while the law suit rate remained unchanged at 0.2 percent. The quotas are estimates because multiple objections can be lodged against the same decision.

Notes for editors

• There are two different organizational models for job centers. In so-called “Joint facilities (gE),” the Federal Employment Agency of Germany (BA) and the respective municipality work together and jointly operate the job centers. In 2025, 300 of 404 job centers were organized in this way. Nationwide, 104 approved municipal agencies (zKTs) operate job centers under municipal responsibility, i.e., without involvement of the BA.
• The figures quoted in this press release are published for both types of organization together because municipal job centers also provide data on objections and law suits directed to the BA in accordance with specified criteria. The only exception is the paragraph on the rate of objections and law suits: the BA is only aware of the number of benefit notices sent for the joint institutions. For this reason, only the objections and law suits received by the joint institutions are taken into account in the calculated quotas.
• Statistical information on disputes and law suits on the internet