The industrial revolution was in full swing in Europe, but the economic growth was stunted with the Panic of 1873, which caused a decade-long economic depression all over the world.

However, the underlying trend of people moving from the countryside (where simple machinery, iron plows, increasing access to horses etc made them reduntant) to the cities continued. Generally, people moved away from eastern Germany to western Germany. East Prussia was losing population to the Rhur and Silesia, where industry (often based around the coal and iron mines in those regions but as time moved on, more and more advanced) demanded more workers.

Bismarck, in an effort to promote "feudal industrialism" and neuter the increasingly bold socialist, introduced "Bismarckian social welfare" - public schooling, healthcare, pensions and unemployment benefits. While rudimentary by today's standards, it was an extensive system and a huge improvement of the lot of labourers in Imperial Germany when they were instituted 1883-1889.

While political freedoms did not exist full with Bismarck's anti-socialist laws - which prevented meetings with socialist intent, banned trade unions and outlawed many newspaper with socialist leanings. In theory, the parliament had full male suffrage, but the districts were not updated, which meant that rural counties (that lost population to the cities) still elected the same number of members of parliament while the cities, which swelled in inhabitants also continued to elect the same number of members of parliament. You thus needed far fewer votres to be elected in the countryside than in the city.

All with the good understanding of Bismarck, as the cities tended to be socialist strongpoints (with their high number of industrial workers) and the countryside conservative (dominated by Junkers or self-owning farmers).

Generally, life in Germany was decent. There was a substantial amount of economic growth, especially after the depression of 1873 (that lasted a decade), corruption was not higher than in other western European countries (as far as I can find sources, this is a bit iffy). Parliamentarism had not been introduced (although it had only been so in Britain at the time), the voting system was uneven and trade unions and socialist meetings were banned. A rudimentary welfare state was available and most cities were making huge effort to build infrastructure (trams, roads, new housing, sewers, water supply etc) to support their massively rising new populations.