The number of people out of work in Germany unexpectedly declined slightly in October, labour office figures showed on Thursday, with the job market underscoring a somewhat more optimistic economic growth outlook by the government this month.
In seasonally adjusted terms, the jobless figure slipped by about a thousand to 2.973 million, while analysts and economists had predicted an increase by 8,000 in a Reuters poll.
The seasonally adjusted jobless rate was unchanged from 6.3% a month earlier, in line with the forecast.
The economy ministry this month slightly raised its economic growth projection for this year to 0.2% from the stagnation foreseen previously, and forecast 1.3% growth next year.
Labour office head Andrea Nahles, however, cautioned that employment growth remained weak. “Overall, the autumn recovery has been sluggish so far,” she said in a statement.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has promised to haul Germany out of the downturn with a sharp increase in infrastructure and defence spending, but those measures are taking longer than expected to translate into better conditions on the ground.
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Editing by Friederike Heine)
