Frankfurt - German unemployment fell in September, official data showed on Wednesday, but without signalling a general improvement for the biggest European economy, experts said.
The raw unemployment rate, the headline figure in Germany, fell to 8%, the Federal Labour Agency reported, and the seasonally-adjusted rate dipped for the the third month running to 8.2%.
Labour agency president Frank Weise said in a statement that the latest results "were not a change in the trend," which has been upwards.
The figures come just three days after Angela Merkel was re-elected chancellor to head a centre-right coalition government which faces a range of tough policy issues, including job protection, arising from the economic crisis.
However, the crucial German machine-tool sector reported some light ahead, with the VDMA federation's chief economist Ralph Weichers saying that "the drop in orders might have finally touched bottom".
That was the case in particular for domestic orders he added, which would be good since Germany typically depends on exports for economic growth.
Government subsidies which allow firms to cut working hours has prevented a surge of jobless claims so far but the first wave of short-work accords are approaching their "sell-by dates," ING senior economist Carsten Brzeski noted.
Germany has managed to keep unemployment from spiralling higher despite its worst recession for six decades. It is now emerging from the downturn, with 0.3% growth in the second quarter of 2009 from output in the previous three-month period.
In August the unemployment rate stood at 8.3%, but the figures have been subject since May to a change in the method of calculation, with jobless workers undergoing training by private agencies purged from the data.
On an unadjusted basis, the latest number of people out of work fell by 125 000 people to 3.346m, the labour agency said on Wednesday, the lowest level since December 2008.
Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast an increase in the jobless rate to 8.4%.
Also important for German unemployment is the new coalition government because it will include liberal Free Democrats (FDP) who call for rules controlling job cutting to be eased to make the labour market more flexible.
Goldman Sachs economist Dirk Schumacher estimated that an interesting test of upcoming talks between the coalition partners on future policy "will be dismissal protection".
He said: "The FDP election platform demands meaningful changes to the current regime while chancellor Merkel apparently made a promise to unions not to touch the current framework."
Such a pledge could undermine already weak hiring prospects, and UniCredit economist Alexander Koch warned that even a solid rebound in manufacturing "should not be enough to prevent further sizeable job cuts in coming months."
- AFP