German Unemployment Falls In November

German unemployment declined as expected in November, report said citing the Federal Labor Agency on Wednesday. Seasonally-adjusted. The number of people out of work decreased by 5,000 in November from prior month, in line with expectations.

German unemployment declined 5,000 in November following a 13,000 decline the previous month and there has not been an increase in the total for 13 months with a 101,000 decline in unemployment in the last 12 months.

The unemployment decline was in line with market expectations and there were no revisions to the previous data.

"The labour market developed in a broadly favourable way in November," Frank-Juergen Weise, head of the Federal Labour Office, said.

"Unemployment increased further and demand for new workers continued to develop at a high level. The employment level has, however, stagnated recently, employment creation, however, has begun to falter lately," he added.

Overall employment increased by 13,000 for the month and increased 352,000 compared with the previous year.

The headline unemployment rate declined to 5.7% with an unchanged rate of 6.0% on an adjusted basis while, on an ILO definition, the unemployment rate was 4.0%.

There was a small 1,000 increase in the number of people in underemployment due to the integration of refugees into the labour force, although the rate of increase has slowed considerably from earlier in 2016.

Overall labour demand remains strong with an increase of 3,000 in the number of vacancies for the month with an annual increase of 71,000. Although the employment index edged lower to 222 for November from 223 previously, the index was well above the 205 reading in November 2015.

But economists caution that a record influx of migrants will eventually dent Germany's stellar unemployment statistics, as it takes time to integrate the new arrivals into the labor market.

Overall confidence in the labour market will remain strong in the short term and the recent PMI data was encouraging as it suggested that order backlogs had stopped declining and this will be a crucial factor in sustaining near-term demand for labour.

There was no significant market reaction with attention focused on the OPEC meeting in Vienna.

The adjusted unemployment rate remained at 6.0 per cent, a total of 2.532 million people were registered as unemployed in November, the lowest level since mid-1991.