Jobless numbers rise

The number of people who are registered as unemployed was up 9,000 in August to 3.472 million according to the seasonally unadjusted numbers released by Germany's Federal Labor Agency.

"Repercussions from the economic crisis were felt in August on the labor market," said agency head Frank-Juergen Weise in a statement released by the office.

On the other hand, the seasonally adjusted numbers fell in August, according to data released Tuesday by the Labor Agency. It showed that the number of people out of work dropped 1,000 to 3.481 million last month.

The unadjusted numbers are politically more relevant, as Germany heads into a general election on September 27.

Economists had predicted a rise of 30,000 in seasonally adjusted terms, which points to the underlying trends in the labor market.

Labor Minister Olaf Scholz said in an article in German magazine Der Spiegel that unemployment would keep rising in the coming months, but that it would stay below four million.

"The economic collapse will of course lead to a jump in unemployment in the coming months," said the Social Democrat minister, adding that "this year we will stay under the four million mark."

Germany is just beginning to emerge from a deep recession. Jobless figures have crept up recently, although the impact of the crisis has not yet been very dramatic because quite a few employers have used government-backed short-time working arrangements to save jobs.

But experts have warned that the slow but steady rise in jobless claims may soon speed up.

An analysis by the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag noted that the 30 companies on Frankfurt's DAX index of blue-chip stocks eliminated a total of 50,000 jobs, including 30,000 in Germany, between October 2008 and June 2009.

EU unemployment hits four-year high

Meanwhile, in numbers released by the European Union's Eurostat agency, unemployment in euro-zone countries hit a 10-year high in July as the lagging effects of Europe's deepest postwar recession hit all 27 EU member states.

In the 16 nations using the single currency, 15.09 million people were unemployed in July. This seasonally-adjusted rate of 9.5 percent is a number not seen since May 1999, according to Eurostat.

For the EU as a whole, the figures were 9.0 percent, which means that there were just under 22 million people out of work, the highest rate since May 2005.

As a whole, that meant a rise of 167,000 in the numbers unemployed across the euro zone compared with June.

Retail numbers rebound

In other economic news, German retail sales posted their first increase since April last month, but economists have warned that the slightest setbacks could stall a sustained rebound in consumption in Europe's biggest economy.

Retail sales gained 0.7 percent in July from the previous month, according to provisional data released Tuesday by Germany's Federal Statistics Office.

In June, retail sales had fallen by 1.3 percent on a monthly basis, the statistics office said in an upwards revision of the previous month's data.

The statisticians base their seasonally adjusted figures on seven German states which represent roughly 76 percent of all retail sales in the country.

av/AP/AFP/dpa
Editor: Nancy Isenson