German Unemployment Falls to Record Low as Economy Gathers Pace
- Jobless rate drops to record low of 5.9 percent in January
- Number of unemployed down 26,000 vs. estimated 5,000 decline
An employee pushes a cart between aisles of merchandise while collecting items for customers' delivery orders inside an Amazon.com Inc. fulfillment center in Koblenz, Germany, on Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016. E-commerce sales in November and December will grow 17.2 percent to $94.7 billion, more than five times the pace of total retail sales growth of 3.3 percent, according to EMarketer.
Photographer: Martin Leissl/BloombergGerman unemployment fell to a record low in January in a sign that Europe’s largest economy is gathering momentum.
The jobless rate declined to 5.9 percent, the lowest level since reunification, as the number of people out of work slid by a seasonally adjusted 26,000 to 2.61 million, data from the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg showed on Tuesday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast the rate would remain unchanged at 6 percent and the number of unemployed would fall by 5,000.