BERLIN, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- Unemployment has fallen once again in Germany, official figures published on Friday by the Federal Labor Office showed.
According to the Nuremberg-based government agency, there were 2,256,000 registered unemployed inhabitants in September. The figure marked a further decline of 94,000 compared to the previous month and 192,000 compared to the same period last year respectively.
The official German unemployment rate was measured by the Federal Labor Office at 5.0 percent during the current month. Using a standardized International Labor Organization (ILO) definition, the Office previously calculated the figure at 3.4 percent for the August.
The German Central Bank (Bundesbank) and several economic institutes have recently pointed to the continued strength of the domestic labor market, and a resulting rise in wages, as an increasingly important pillar of German growth.
The Office attributed the latest positive development in this regard to a traditional drop in unemployment which occurs when Germans return from their summer holidays in early autumn.
Underemployment, a category which also includes people who are temporarily unable to work or receive some form of related government aid, declined as well in September. The total figure was measured at 3,170,000, down by 17,000 on a monthly and seasonal-adjusted basis and by 235,000 compared to September 2017.
The Office highlighted that demand for new workers among employers remained "very high" after seven consecutive years of economic growth in Germany. The number of registered vacancies rose by 61,000 to 834,000 between September 2017 and September 2018.
Speaking to Xinhua on Friday, Holger Schaefer, senior economist for employment and unemployment at the German Economic Institute (IW), said that the latest figures provided more evidence of the healthy state of the German labor market.
"The decline in unemployment has continued in September. Underemployment decreased significantly too without this development being overly reliant on an expansion of labor policy measures," Schaefer said.
