The number of people out of work in Germany rose to 2.96m in May \u2014 the highest May number seen since 2010 \u2014 the national employment agency said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The monthly increase, which came to 34,000 in seasonally-adjusted terms, was significantly higher than the 10,000 expected.<\/p>\n
The unemployment rate nonetheless remained unchanged month-on-month at 6.3%, despite showing a rise in year-on-year terms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of unemployment when compared to the previous year is due to the weakness of the manufacturing sector. There are however signs that things are looking up, which has to do with the planned expansionary fiscal policy of the new government,\u201d Dr. Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist of Hamburg Commercial Bank, told Euronews.<\/p>\n
Related<\/b><\/p>\n
Germany has recently approved a constitutional amendment to its \u2018debt brake\u2019 rule, meaning defence spending above 1% of GDP will not be subject to borrowing limits. The government has also created a \u20ac500 billion extrabudgetary fund for additional infrastructure spending, set to provide Germany with an economic boost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main challenge for the new government is only in part the people without work, but rather the fact that many industries still suffer from labour shortages,\u201d de la Rubia added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants to combat this with a combination of measures, including incentives for retired people to continue to work, a targeted immigration policy, and a policy which encourages unemployed people to look more actively for a new job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from a lack of skilled workers, Germany\u2019s economy has been facing a series of headwinds. These include the long-term impact of Russia\u2019s energy supply cuts, ageing infrastructure, excessive bureaucracy, low public investment, and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers.<\/p>\n
Even so, Carsten Brzeski, the Global Head of Macro for ING Research, noted in response to Wednesday\u2019s data that \u201cthe German labour market has been in a very gradual soft landing since 2022\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the number of unemployed has increased from 2.2 million in May 2022 back to almost 3 million again currently, the number of vacancies has come down since late 2021. The fact that, until recently, employment was at record highs can be explained by migration flows.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even so, Brzeski added that a hiring pickup hasn\u2019t revived private spending, particularly as a \u201clarge part of the recent job growth took place in part-time and low-wage jobs\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although migration can help to fill job vacancies, Germany\u2019s labour outlook is clouded by cost-cutting measures in certain industries and the potential fallout from US President Trump\u2019s trade wars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of people out of work in Germany rose to 2.96m in May \u2014 the highest May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[38636,2000,299,60475,1945,1824,60474,16919],"class_list":{"0":"post-138983","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-cyrus-de-la-rubia","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-expansionary-fiscal-policy","12":"tag-friedrich-merz","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-national-employment-agency","15":"tag-unemployment-rate"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114586091816586896","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}