Business

German recovery continues as employment and volume of work increases

Published

5 years ago

August 18, 2021

Olu Emmanuel

There were further signs that Germany’s labour market was recovering well after the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis.

The number of people in employment and the volume of work increased in the second quarter of 2021.

According to the Federal Statistical office, about 44.7 million people were employed in Germany from April to June.

That was a seasonally adjusted increase of 75,000 people, an increase of 0.2 per cent when compared with the same period in 2020.

This is according to preliminary calculations by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the overall volume of work in the economy, the hours worked by all employees.

It said that the self-employed rose sharply by 6.8 per cent to 14.1 billion hours compared with the second quarter of 2020.

One reason for this was the reduced use of short-time work, which had fallen from a maximum of six million people since the second half of March 2020 to about two million.

According to the data, each individual worked at an average of 316.2 hours in the second quarter, which was 6.8 per cent more than at the height of the coronavirus crisis in 2020.