Thursday's news about German unemployment buoyed a trip to the United Kingdom for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was praised by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for her government's success in navigating the financial crisis.
"It's a remarkable achievement of Germany to have brought unemployment down from 5 million (at its postwar peak in February 2005) to under 3 million," Brown said to reporters in London on Friday morning. Germany's Federal Labor Agency released numbers on Thursday showing a drop in unemployment to 2.997 million, or 7.2 percent.
The German Labor Agency pulled good numbers out of a hat in October.
German commentators, of course, are never a breed to take good news lying down. On Friday they're showing perhaps justified skepticism about the good unemployment numbers, and explaining why the rosy outlook in their country cannot last.
The left-wing daily Die Tageszeitung writes:
"Many of the new jobs are temporary jobs. Economists point out that these are the first to vanish again. The promise by Labor Minister Olaf Scholz to increase money for the partially unemployed shows, above all, just how little room there is for politicians to act. Only 50,0000 employees in Germany, up till now, have claimed 'partially unemployed' status."
"As a rule unemployment statistics rest on the recent past, and describe the present. But we've moved into the future already -- a future that everyone was starting to fear."
The Financial Times Germany writes:
"To take these numbers as a reason to celebrate, at least one or two conditions need to be filled: Either the unemployment numbers suggest that Germany is on its way to a brighter future, or they suggest political success from the past. Neither of these is the case."
"It's clear even to the Federal Labor Agency that this aftermath of the most recent boom can't predict the future of the German labor market. ... It's also clear that the Social Democratic labor minister has failed to draw as many jobs as possible out of the latest boom."
"During the boom, there were many open jobs which went unclaimed. Now the stockpile won't do the nation much good. When an economy booms the Federal Labor Agency has an opportunity to match up offers for jobs with job-seekers, as long as it can find personnel. But when firms pare back on jobs, the agency can do little."
The conservative daily Die Welt writes:
"While the markets take a roller coaster ride, while governments forge multibillion-dollar packages to save their banks and while the financial crisis, more and more, seeps into the real economy, German unemployment has sunk. Since the first post-reunification boom 16 years ago, unemployment in Germany has never been so low."
"The labor market has reached its zenith. ... (But) there are many indications that it is also more robustly prepared for a crisis than it was in previous low points. Welfare reforms are having an effect. The labor market is more flexible, and hurdles to (economic) adjustment are lower. This new flexibility will prove its value in the coming economic crisis. Harz IV (the Schröder-era welfare reform package that gradually reduces unemployment benefits for the longterm jobless) with its principle of 'encourage and demand' has made sure that unemployed people in the next crisis will both seek and find new work more quickly."
The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:
"The low numbers from October could perhaps move even lower in November, but after that we will have reached the bottom of the current cycle. How long and how steep the other side will be is hard to calculate."
"The metal industry, heart of the German economy, can still limit cost-cutting layoffs by adopting a modest new salary contract. It's worth bargaining hard for this goal. It would be nice not to have to wait another 16 years for the next good news from the German labor market."
-- Michael Scott Moore, 3 p.m. CET
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008
All Rights Reserved
Reproduction only allowed with the permission of SPIEGELnet GmbH
