Federal agency for work
The number of unemployed rises by 12,000 in December
The words “” Agentur für Arbeit “” are written early in the morning at a stop in Stuttgart, while a tram is arriving in the background. Photo: Christoph Schmidt / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The number of unemployed in Germany rose slightly again in December for seasonal reasons. No reason to be nervous for the Federal Employment Agency. The labor market remains robust.
The number of unemployed in Germany rose to 2.330 million in December, as is typical of the season.
That is 12,000 more than in November, but 378,000 less than in December 2020, announced the Federal Employment Agency on Tuesday in Nuremberg. The unemployment rate remained stable at 5.1 percent.
The Federal Employment Agency attributed the increase mainly to seasonal effects. The labor market developed well towards the end of the year, said the chairman of the board of the federal agency, Detlef Scheele. “The recovery of the last few months has continued,” he emphasized. Unemployment and underemployment decreased again in December, seasonally adjusted. For the December statistics, the Federal Agency took into account data that were available up to December 13th.
However, short-time work increased again in December. From December 1st to December 27th, companies – mainly from the hospitality and retail sectors – reported economic short-time work for 286,000 people. As a rule, short-time working is not actually used for every advertisement. For November, the federal agency had reported advertisements for 104,000 people.
How much short-time work was actually used is available by October. In that month, 710,000 people were paid short-time working benefits – a further decrease. At its peak, the Federal Agency had to pay short-time work benefits for almost six million people in Germany in the first lockdown of the corona pandemic in April 2020.