2008: 1.5% more persons in employment than a year earlier
WIESBADEN – According to first provisional calculations of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of persons in employment whose place of employment was in Germany amounted to about 40.35 million on an annual average in 2008. That was an increase of 582,000 persons or 1.5% on a year earlier. Hence the number of persons in employment in 2008 reached its highest level since German unification. However, the increase in employment in the reference year was slightly smaller than in 2007 when the number of persons in employment rose by 671,000 persons or 1.7% on 2006. As in the two previous years, employment growth in 2008 was based on the economic upturn, which continued far into the first half of the year. The economic slowdown which has set in now did not have a major impact on the annual employment result because the labour market reacts with some delay to changes in the short-term economic trend. Also, in 2008, support for dependent employment (for example, integration allowance) was utilised more often than in the previous year. The seasonal short-time working allowance, too, which was introduced at the end of 2006, contributed to the positive employment trend at the beginning of 2008. However, the number of persons supported in job opportunities decreased, as did the utilisation of self-employment support. Consequently, most of the employment growth on an annual average in 2008 resulted from the rise in the number of employees: Compared with the previous year, it was up by 568,000 persons (+1.6%) to just under 35.9 million employees. The number of self-employed including family workers increased just slightly on a year earlier by 14,000 persons (+0.3%) to approximately 4.5 million. The favourable development of the number of employees in 2008 was almost entirely due to the increase in jobs subject to full social insurance contributions, whereas the growth of minor employment (mini jobs) performed as a main job nearly came to a standstill in 2008. Most economic sectors saw year-on-year job gains in 2008. The largest increases were recorded in the service branches as a whole. There, the number of persons in employment rose by 471,000 persons (+1.6%) on the previous year. Industry including energy again provided major support for growth. There the number of persons in employment was up by 118,000 persons (+1.5%). However, the number of persons in employment in construction was down by 18,000 persons (–0.8%), following the first job gains in 11 years achieved on balance in 2007. In agriculture and forestry, 11,000 more persons (+1.3%) were in employment on an annual average than a year earlier. The employment trend by economic sectors has been accompanied by structural change for some time, which continued in 2008: The share of employees in the service branches when put in relation to total employment rose from 59.5% in 1991 to 72.5% in 2008. Accordingly, in the primary and the secondary sector, the employment share decreased continuously: In 1991, 3.9% of all persons in employment worked in agriculture and forestry, whereas in 2008 the share was just 2.1%. In industry including energy, the share of employees was down by 9.4 percentage points over the same period, that is from 29.3% to 19.9%. In construction, the share of persons in employment continuously declined since its peak in 1995 (8.6% of the persons in employment) and was at 5.4% in 2008, which was by 1.9 percentage points lower than in 1991. The current national accounts data on employment by quarters and years are available here. >>> Brief methodological description employment
