German Unemployment and Job Creation

German Unemployment and Job Creation

While the majority of the world's nations are trying to get through and recover from the economic recession, Germany seems to be holding its own when it comes to unemployment. The Federal Employment Agency reported around 3,000 million people were jobless in Germany in January of the current year. That is the lowest January number that has been reported in the last 21 years. But, regardless of the somewhat stable unemployment rate most companies are still preparing to make substantial cuts to their workforce. For example, the information technology company IBM, which employs around 20,000 workers at its Germany based facility, is planning to cut the number of workers it employs by half to 10,000. The list of major companies in Germany who are planning major job cuts in Germany is not a short one, and the number of jobs that will be in cut are in the thousands. In Cologne the Institute for the German Economy states that the job cuts are nothing out of the ordinary for a dynamic fast changing structural economy. The Institute for the German Economy also expects that unemployment will slide by an additional 100,000 this year, but the institute also believes that new jobs will continue to be created regardless of the of the expected job cuts and worsening economy. Core industries, such as the engineering and electrical sectors, are the main job creators in Germany at this time, and many hope these sectors will help ease the rise in unemployment.