German unemployment fells to record low in May
Xinhua,May 30, 2018 Adjust font size:
BERLIN, May 30 (Xinhua) -- The number of unemployed in Germany fell to the lowest level since Germany's reunification in 1990, figures by the Federal Labor Office showed on Wednesday.
The Office put the number of unemployed in May at 2.315 million, marking a decline of 68,000 compared to the previous month. On an annual basis, the number of unemployed declined by 182,000. As a consequence, the official unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage to 5.1 percent.
"Unemployment and underemployment have decreased again, insurable employment is continuing to grow and the demand for workers remains high," a statement by Federal Labor Office director Detlef Scheele read.
Scheele noted, however, that the long-standing positive trend in the German labor market was slightly less pronounced in May than in previous months.
According to the Federal Labor Office, the number of unemployed also fell on a seasonally-adjusted basis by more than 11,000 to a total of 2.358 million.
In the category of underemployment, which includes individuals who are completing some form of jobs training, the Office measured a seasonally-adjusted monthly decline of 17,000 to 3.286 million. The government agency also recorded around 793,000 jobs vacancies in May.
The Office has recently put the figure of Germans in work at the record level of 44.62 million in April.
The Wiesbaden-based government agency emphasized that an annual increase of 592,000 in the number of employed was hereby entirely accounted for by more stable forms of socially-insured work. Enditem