Press release No.001 / 2010-01-04

2009: Less persons in employment, more unemployed than in the previous year

WIESBADEN – According to first provisional calculations of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the number of persons in employment with place of residence in Germany amounted to about 40.15 million on an annual average in 2009. That was a decrease of 72,000 persons or 0.2% compared to the annual average of 2008. In a year-on-year comparison, the number of persons in employment, which had stood at 40.22 million in 2008 and reached its highest level since German unification, dropped for the first time since 2005.

According to preliminary estimates based on the labour force survey and on internationally agreed definitions, the number of unemployed increased by 169,000 persons to 3.31 million on an annual average in 2009. Consequently, 5.4% more people were unemployed in 2009 than in 2008. The actively available labour force, defined as the total of employed and unemployed persons, rose by 97,000 to 43.46 million compared with the previous year. The unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of unemployed persons in the total labour force, increased from 7.2% in 2008 to an average of 7.6% in 2009.

In view of the difficult economic framework conditions in the past year, neither the decrease in employment nor the increase in unemployment was as strong as feared by many observers. In particular the massive extension of short-time work and the reduction of both overtime hours and assets on working time accounts helped to limit the falls in employment in 2009. Looking at the annual average in 2009, the number of employees residing in Germanydeclined only moderately by 49,000 (–0.1%) to just over 35.7 million ascompared with a year earlier. The number of self-employed including unpaid family workers dropped by 23,000 persons (–0.5%) to about 4.4 million over the same period.

According to the Federal Statistical Office's first provisional calculations, the number of persons in employment whose place of employment was in Germany amounted to about 40.24 million on an annual average in 2009. That was a decrease of 37,000 persons or 0.1% from the previous year. The difference between the number of persons in employment whose place of residence is in Germany and of those whose place of employment is in Germany can be explained by the number of resident and non-resident employees commuting across the borders of Germany (balance of cross-border commuters). On an annual average in 2009, there was a surplus of 94,000 incoming commuters, that is a positive balance between the number of non-resident employees working in Germany and the number of resident employees working abroad. The surplus of incoming commuters exceeded the average surplus in 2008 by 35,000 persons.

By economic sectors, trends diverge considerably in 2009 for the number of persons in employment whose place of employment is in Germany: On an annual average, the number of persons in employment in all service branches rose by 171,000 persons (+0.6%) against 2008. In agriculture and forestry and in construction, small increases in employment by 5,000 and 4,000 persons were recorded. In contrast, the global slump in economic performance observed especially in the more export-oriented areas of industry (including energy) had a negative impact on the employment trend. There the average employment losses recorded for 2009 compared with 2008, which amounted to 217,000 persons (–2.7%), were so large as to erode the job gains of the two preceding years on balance.

The longer-term structural change, which has accompanied the employment trend by economic sectors in Germany since its unification, continued also in 2009. In the reference year, nearly three fourths of all persons in employment worked in the service branches: The tertiary sector’s share in the total number of persons in employment rose from 59.5% in 1991 to 73% in 2009. As a consequence, the employment share has fallen continuously in the primary and secondary sectors. While 3.9% of all persons in employment worked in agriculture and forestry in 1991, their share was only 2.1% in 2009. However, the employment share of agriculture stabilised in the past four years and did not go down any further. Rising by 0.1 percentage points to 5.5%, the employment share of construction was up slightly in 2009 for the first time since its peak of 1995 (8.6% of persons in employment). It was thus by 1.8 percentage points lower than in the year 1991. In industry (including energy), the share of all persons in employment has fallen by nearly ten percentage points since 1991, from 29.3% to 19.4%. In the last year alone, the share was down by 0.5 percentage points on account of cyclical employment losses.

Current data on employment and unemployment are available on the Destatis website.

Persons in employment whose place of employment is in Germany, by economic sector ¹⁾
Year	Persons in employment, total	Agriculture, forestry and fishing	Industry, including energy	Construction	Service activities ²⁾
¹⁾ Annual averages. ²⁾ Trade, hotel and restaurant services, transport, financial, renting and business activities, other service activities.
Persons in 1,000
2003	38,726	880	8,140	2,322	27,384
2004	38,880	873	8,020	2,254	27,733
2005	38,835	853	7,894	2,179	27,909
2006	39,075	837	7,826	2,174	28,238
2007	39,724	850	7,911	2,209	28,754
2008	40,279	860	8,030	2,193	29,196
2009	40,242	865	7,813	2,197	29,367
Change in % on the corresponding period of the previous year
2003	–0.9	–2.7	–2.6	–4.8	–0.1
2004	0.4	–0.8	–1.5	–2.9	1.3
2005	–0.1	–2.3	–1.6	–3.3	0.6
2006	0.6	–1.9	–0.9	–0.2	1.2
2007	1.7	1.6	1.1	1.6	1.8
2008	1.4	1.2	1.5	–0.7	1.5
2009	–0.1	0.6	–2.7	0.2	0.6
Percentage shares of the economic sectors in the total number of persons in employment
1991	100	3.9	29.3	7.3	59.5
2003	100	2.3	21.0	6.0	70.7
2004	100	2.2	20.6	5.8	71.3
2005	100	2.2	20.3	5.6	71.9
2006	100	2.1	20.0	5.6	72.3
2007	100	2.1	19.9	5.6	72.4
2008	100	2.1	19.9	5.4	72.5
2009	100	2.1	19.4	5.5	73.0

>>> Brief methodological description employment
>>> Brief methodological description hours worked

For further information please call:
Michael Braig,
tel: +49 611 75 2932,

E-mail: arbeitsmarkt@destatis.de

For more details please refer to the German version.

Contact:
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fax: (+49-611)75-3976
presse@destatis.de
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