Official figures show that the unemployment rate in Germany was steady at 8.1% in December.
The country's Federal Labour Agency said the number of job seekers rose by 28,000 from November to just over 3.4 million.
Joblessness traditionally rises in the winter months as sectors such as construction slow down production due to worse weather.
Seasonally adjusted figures provided by the central bank, the Bundesbank, considered to give a more accurate picture of the state of the job market, showed around 78,000 fewer unemployed, significantly better than the 25,000 fall analysts had forecast.
For the whole of 2007, the unadjusted jobless rate came in at 9%, down 1.8 percentage points in the year.
'The demand for manpower remains high and leads us to expect continuing growth in employment in 2008,' agency chief Frank Weise said.
