In Germany, “the fear of unemployment is coming back in force”, announcement The mirror. On Friday January 3, the Federal Employment Agency announced that the number of unemployed people had increased slightly in 2024, reaching 6.1% of the active population. Europe’s largest economy had nearly 2.8 million unemployed last year.
These figures are far from catastrophic. They are even lower than the forecasts of certain economists, who expected an unemployment rate of 6.2%. The Hamburg newspaper remains no less worried. Because the number of new claims for compensation for loss of employment exceeded the symbolic mark of 10,000 in December. And the use of partial unemployment also increased in 2024. Nearly 320,000 people were affected, compared to 241,000 the previous year.
In recent months, the bad news has been coming one after the other. Volkswagen, Bayer, Bosch and BASF have announced cost reduction plans due to financial difficulties. And “in the third quarter of 2024, the German industrial sector lost 16,000 more jobs than the deterioration of the economy would suggest, according to the Institute for Labor Market Research (IAB)”, note it Spiegel. However, industry is one of the engines of the country’s economy.
The industry in crisis
“The labor market is suffering from an economic slowdown that appeared after the energy crisis of 2022, and the effects of which are still being felt today”analyzes Enzo Weber, economics researcher at the IAB. Questioned by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he expects the German unemployment rate to rise further in 2025, at least in some areas:
“The industry is going through a crisis from which it will only emerge if it seriously renews itself to revive itself, with new business models, innovation and investments.”
“Did you think unemployment only happened to other people?” ironically Spiegel. In a long report, the Hamburg weekly reports how the middle classes could soon be affected by downgrading. Because the financial concerns of large groups would only be “the visible part of a deep crisis” : “The decline is striking out of sight, in small rural areas where factories have sustained an entire town for several generations, like that of Rodenstock [entreprise de technologies spécialisées dans le domaine médical]in Regen [en Bavière].”
