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No Improvement on German Job Market

AFPSeptember 2, 2004

The number of people looking for work in Germany rose in August, as the modest economic recovery was not enough to create any new jobs in the eurozone's biggest economy, official data showed on Thursday.

https://p.dw.com/p/5WEf
Millions are still waiting for jobsImage: AP

The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, calculated that the number of people out of work last month rose by 24,000 to 4.414 million, equivalent to 10.6 percent of the working population.

Unemployment in Germany has been increasing steadily since the beginning of the year, with a total 145,000 more people on the dole in August than in January.

The Bundesbank data are seasonally adjusted.

Raw or unadjusted data published separately the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg painted a slightly more positive picture, with the unadjusted jobless total falling by 13,400 to 4.347 million.

No fundamental improvement

But that decline was solely a result of seasonal factors and not any fundamental improvement in the labor market -- unemployment usually decreases at this time of year at the start of the school term and as factories re-open after the summer holidays.

Frank-Jürgen Weise
Frank WeiseImage: AP

"The economy is continuing to develop positively," said Frank Weise (photo), who heads the labor agency. "But that's not yet feeding through into the labor market."

In regional terms, the seasonally adjusted jobless total in western Germany increased by 18,000 to 2.809 million, equivalent to a jobless rate of 8.6 percent.

In the former communist east, the adjusted jobless total rose by 6,000 to 1.605 million, equivalent to 18.3 percent of the workforce.

Situation stabilizing?

The difficult situation on the German labor market was underlined by employment statistics published by the federal statistics office, Destatis, in Wiesbaden.

Destatis calculated that a total 38.204 million people in Germany were in work in June, the last month for which data were available, down from 38.205 million in July. Nevertheless, the decline was much smaller than the fall of 11,000 the previous month, signalling that the employment situation in German finally appears to be stabilizing.