An average of 45.9 million people were employed in Germany last year, which was the highest since the reunification of the country in 1990. The Federal Statistical Office announced this in a preliminary balance sheet.
In a country with roughly 84 million inhabitants, employment thus reached a record, year-on-year it was higher by 333,000. On Wednesday, the Federal Labor Office will publish a report on December developments on the German labor market with details on unemployment.
«The number of employed persons thus reached a new historical maximum, the record from 2019 was already surpassed in 2022,» the statistical office said. He noted that the trend of increasing employment in 2020 was interrupted by the covid-19 pandemic.
At that time, employment decreased by 361 thousand people. In 2021, employment increased only slightly year-on-year, namely by 69 thousand, a year later the number of employed people increased significantly, namely by 612 thousand people.
«One of the reasons for the increase in employment in 2023 was the immigration of foreign workers. In addition, the share of employment of the domestic population increased. These two growth impulses outweighed the dampening effects of demographic changes on the labor market, which in the medium term may lead to a significant decline in the working-age population,» the statisticians said.
Nine out of ten new hires found work in the service sector, which employed 34.6 million people last year. In other areas, employment grew more slowly.
In the manufacturing sector, excluding construction, it was 25,000 more, and in construction by 15,000. In agriculture and forestry, on the other hand, employment fell as in previous years, specifically by two thousand people. Last year, 555,000 people worked in these sectors.
Last year, according to the methodology of the International Labor Organization, unemployment fell by a tenth of a percentage point, to 2.8 percent. Statistics on the development of the German labor market are also published by the Federal Labor Office, which does so every month. The Labor Office will publish the figures for last December.
