German unemployment dropped last year to 7.7% of the workforce from 8.2% in 2009 owing to strong recovery in Germany which has the biggest economy in Europe, official figures showed today.
Improvement was seen across the country and in all age brackets, the labour office said, as Germany pulled out of its worst post-war recession and activity expanded by what might be the fastest rate since reunification in 1990.
The number of people out of work climbed in December however on an unadjusted basis by 85,000 to 3.016 million as cold temperatures crimped construction activity, the data showed.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the standard used by economists for comparisons, it was the first monthly increase since June 2009.
The seasonally-corrected unemployment rate in December nonetheless remained at 7.5%, in line with average forecasts. That is its lowest rate since 1992.
Economy Minister Rainer Bruderle forecast 'further improvement in the labour market this year,' and said in a statement that full employment was within reach.
Germany has benefited from increased global trade and domestic demand has also picked up as companies went ahead with investment plans and the number of unemployed fell steadily last year.
The central bank has forecast economic growth of 3.6% for 2010, a post-reunification record, followed by further expansion of 2% this year.
Spanish unemployment drops in five-month first
The number of people unemployed in Spain, which has the highest jobless rate in the European Union, fell for the first time for five months in December, the labour ministry said today.
There were 4.1 million people registered as jobless last month, down 10,221 or 0.25% from November, the biggest decline for the month of December since 2000, it said. Compared with the total 12 months ago, however, the figure was still up 4.5%, or 176,470.
Spain's secretary of state for employment, Mari Luz Rodriguez, said it was the 'best behaviour for employment in the month of December in the last 10 years' but she stressed that 'we can't be complacent because there are still over four million people without work'.
The Spanish government does not provide a jobless rate, but the national statistics institute, which uses a different calculation method from the labour ministry, said on October 29 that the rate had dropped to 19.79% in the third quarter of 2010 from 20.09%in the second.
It was the first drop in the unemployment rate since it dipped to 7.95% in the second quarter of 2007, its lowest level since 1975.
Last month Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government announced it was scrapping a €426 per month subsidy for the long-term unemployed as part of austerity measures to slash the public deficit.
The Spanish economy, the EU's fifth largest, slumped into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of a labour-intensive construction boom. It emerged with tepid growth of just 0.1% in the first quarter of 2010 and 0.2% in the second but then stalled with zero growth in the third.
