BERLIN: The number of registered unemployed in Germany dropped to its lowest level in 24 years in September. But there are still plenty of jobless people looking for work in a market where skills are of the essence.
The German federal employment agency reported on Wednesday from its headquarters in Nuremberg that 88,000 fewer people were registered as unemployed in September than in August. But there are still 2.708 million registered unemployed, with the official jobless rate at 6.2 percent, the agency said.
The drop in unemployment compared to August was expected, since there is normally a seasonal adjustment after the summer, with more jobs on offer in September and students taking up apprenticeships. For that reason, a better assessment of jobless rates is by comparison with the figures from September a year ago.
That comparison also has Germany’s labor force on a positive trend. Compared to September 2014, in September this year there were about 100,000 fewer registered unemployed.
“On the whole, the positive trend in the labor market is continuing,” said Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of the employment agency.
Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, also released employment figures on Wednesday – albeit for August, not September. The agency counts “unemployment” differently than does Germany’s jobs agency. For Germany, Eurostat put forward an August official unemployment rate of 4.5 percent. For the Eurozone as a whole, it reported a seasonally adjusted rate of 11.0 percent.
For Greece and Spain, the numbers were 25.2 and 22.2 percent respectively. In the EU’s 28 member states, 23 saw a decrease in unemployment compared to August a year ago, France, Finland and two others saw an increase, and Romania remained stable.
It’s important to note that Eurostat’s formal definition of unemployment, which is based on an International Labor Organisation (ILO) norm, doesn’t nearly capture the total number of jobless.
The ILO definition of “unemployed persons” includes people who are without work, actively seeking work, and immediately available to work. However, it does not include three other categories of jobless people: Undermployed part-time workers, jobless people seeking work but not immediately available to take jobs, and jobless people available for work but not actively seeking it.
