May 28, 2009, 9:41 GMT
Nuremberg, Germany - German unemployment declined by 127,000 in May to 3.45 million, according to figures released by the Federal Labour Agency on Thursday.
That means 8.2 per cent of the workforce are without jobs.
'The spring revival reached the labour market later than usual this year and brought a considerable decrease in the number of people out of work,' said the head of the labour agency, Frank-Juergen Weise.
But he warned that labour market indicators failed to show a trend for the better as Europe's biggest economy struggled to drag itself out of recession.
Some 1.1 million workers were on short-time working conditions as factories acted to reduce capacity because of a fall-off in orders triggered by the global economic meltdown.
In the key engineering sector, new orders in April slumped by 58 per cent from the same month of the previous year, figures released on Thursday showed.
The positive labour market figures were helped by changes to the way statistics are compiled. Under the new calculations, people seeking jobs through private employment agencies are not classed as unemployed.
If this category were added to the official figures, the number of jobless in May would be 3.47 million, a labour agency spokeswoman said.
In seasonally adjusted terms, the number of jobless rose by 1,000 to 3.45 million, the agency said.
Economists have warned the number of unemployed could climb to 4.1 million by the end of the year, with the government saying it expects the nation's economy to contract a dramatic 6 per cent this year.
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