BERLIN, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Germany's unemployment rate remained 6 percent in April, with the number of jobless people down 20,000 month-on-month to 2.75 million, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) said Tuesday.
The decline was smaller than usual, leading to a net increase of 10,000 unemployed individuals after seasonal adjustment.
"As the labor market continues to lack an economic tailwind, the spring recovery remains weak," said BA board member Daniel Terzenbach at the monthly press conference, noting that the overall situation on Germany's labor market "remains robust," although the country's economy had not gained momentum for two years.
Germany's workforce continued growing, according to figures published by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) on Tuesday. In March, employed people reached 45.7 million, 0.2 percent higher than the same month last year.
Following a recession in 2023, Europe's largest economy is slowly returning to growth. In the first quarter of this year, Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.2 percent compared to the previous quarter, according to Destatis.
For the year 2024 as a whole, the German government anticipated a 0.3-percent growth of the country's economy in its spring projection published last week. It expected the unemployment to gradually fall during the economic recovery.
However, the German labor market continues to suffer from a massive shortage of skilled workers, with almost 150,000 specialists missing in the IT sector alone, according to the country's digital association Bitkom. Bitkom warned that, without adequate countermeasures, this figure could quadruple to around 650,000 by 2040. ■
