Nuremburg, June 30, (dpa/GNA) – Unemployment in Germany has fallen more sharply than in any June in the past 10 years.
The number of people without a job fell significantly by 73,000 to 2.6 million compared with May, the Federal Employment Agency announced in Nuremberg on Wednesday. That is 239,000 fewer unemployed people than in June 2020.
The national unemployment rate fell by 0.2 percentage points to 5.7 per cent compared with May. It fell by 0.5 per cent when compared with June last year.
“The comprehensive improvement on the labour market is continuing,” said Detlef Scheele, from the Federal Employment Agency. “Unemployment and underemployment continued to fall strongly.”
There was a noticeable decrease in short-time work, the agency said, with only 59,000 new notifications for the government-backed furlough scheme in the period from 1 to 24 June. In most cases, fewer people actually took up short-time work than were reported.
There were almost six million people on short time work at the scheme’s peak in April 2020.
However, the situation on the apprenticeship market is tense. From October 2020 to June 2021, 385,000 young people applied for an apprenticeship place, 32,000 fewer than a year earlier – with roughly the same number of school leavers.
Some 158,000 applicants were still without a place in June. Companies registered 468,000 training places, 15,000 fewer than a year earlier. Of these, 216,000 were still unfilled in June.
GNA