Germany's federal government has overhauled its civil service pay scale, granting hundreds of thousands of public officials salary increases of up to 20 percent or more following a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), which found that existing pay levels were unconstitutionally low. The court established that no civil servant may earn less than 80 percent of the median wage, and that salaries must keep pace with broader wage and price trends — a standard the government is now legally obliged to meet at an additional annual cost of roughly €3.5 billion to the federal budget alone. Critics argue the move will draw scarce skilled workers away from private industry, where salaries must be justified by market productivity, and that the court's ruling fails to account for the significant job security — including lifetime tenure — that civil servants already enjoy over their private-sector counterparts.