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German jobless rate remains at record low

Xinhua, June 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

German unemployment declined for the eighth consecutive month in May and helped keep the jobless rate in Europe's biggest economy at its record low level, official data showed on Tuesday.

In seasonally adjusted terms, the number of people registered as unemployed fell by 6,000 to 2.79 million in May, German Federal Labour Agency said.

The adjusted jobless rate thus remained unchanged from the previous month at 6.4 percent, the lowest level since German reunification in 1990.

"Although economic growth has recently slowed somewhat, the labor market continues to develop favorably," said the labour agency's chief Frank-Juergen Weise in a statement.

Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2015, slower than the growth of 0.7 percent in the last quarter of 2014.

Foreign trade was the main factor that dragged economic growth. Private consumption, meanwhile, was one of the main driving forces, thanks to a stable labour market, low interest rates, rising wages and falling energy prices.

A separate report from German federal statistical office Destatis showed that Germany's jobless rate measured with concept of International Labour Organization (ILO) stood at 4.7 percent in April, unchanged from in March when the average jobless rate of the euro zone was 11.3 percent. Endit