German labour market rising but pace slows
EMPLOYMENT continued to increase in Germany during September, figures out yesterday showed, but the federal statistics office Destatis warned that momentum was slipping out of labour market improvements.
Employment climbed 324,000 in the year to last month, hitting 41.8m, Destatis said, while unemployment fell 48,000 to 2.2m.
However the statistics office said that yearly employment growth had slowed down from 1.4 per cent in January to just 0.6 per cent last month, calling the drop a loss of momentum.
The seasonally adjusted figures – which showed a completely flat picture – backed up this less optimistic approach to the stats.
And credit constraints data from think tank Ifo also suggested Germany resilience to the Eurozone debt crisis was ebbing away. The proportion of German firms calling credit conditions “restrictive” increased 0.9 percentage points to hit 23.1 per cent, Ifo data showed.
But this slight increase still suggested conditions were much easier than during much of aftermath of the financial crisis, when the proportion stayed above half for nearly a year.