German labour market shrugs off crisis

FRANKFURT, Jan 3 (AFP): The German labour market shrugged off the eurozone debt crisis and unemployment dropped to its lowest level in 20 years last year, new data showed Tuesday.
"The labour market continued to develop positively at the end of 2011 and we can look back on a good year, when unemployment dropped sharply, employment increased and demand for labour remained very high throughout the whole year," said the head of the Federal Labour Agency, Frank Weise.
Taking 2011 as a whole, the jobless total fell by 263,000 to 2.976 million in nominal or unadjusted terms, equivalent to 0.6-per cent decline in the jobless rate to an annual average 7.1 per cent, the agency said.
Both the jobless total and the jobless rate were therefore at their lowest level since unification in 1991, noted German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler.
"2011 can be described as the most successful since German unification for working people," Roesler said.