By: Dr. Mike Campbell
Maintaining the attempt to keep these pieces upbeat for a full week, today we are happy to announce that the level of unemployment in Germany has fallen to its lowest level in the nation’s modern history.
At the end of the Second World War, Churchill described the ideological schism between eastern and western Europe as an Iron Curtain which had fallen across the continent, dividing the capitalist, democratic west from the communist countries of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations. It took almost fifty years before the curtain was finally lifted and a seminal act in this process was the fall o the Berlin wall and subsequent re-unification of Germany which had been splintered into East and West Germany in the embers of the war.
West Germany was the poster boy of post war success, but the same could not be said of East Germany which had fared badly under communism. When the two nations reunified in 1990, unemployment in the new nation (particularly the eastern part) became a problem. Much work needed to be done to modernise and stimulate the eastern region; a drain on the former western regions resources which caused a degree of resentment in both regions of the new nation.
Germany remains the powerhouse of the EU and the fact that unemployment fell at the end of 2011 from 7.7 to 7.1% (on an average basis) is welcome news. Unemployment peaked in the post reunification period at 12% and flirted with the 8% level during the global financial recession. Most pundits believe that economic conditions may well deteriorate during 2012 before they get better. The current unemployment figure in Germany is 2.88 million. The better employment figures were credited with helping the Dax to rise by 1% on the news.