German jobless will not break 5 million barrier: experts

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

BERLIN (AFP) — Unemployment in Germany will not break through the five million barrier even during an economic downturn, according to experts quoted in German newspapers Saturday.

"The labour market has developed in such a positive way in the past two years that we will not attain the old record levels of more than five million jobless," Holger Schaefer of the German economic institute IW told the daily Bild.

Another expert, Klaus Zimmerman, head of the DIW institute for economic research, told Bild that Germany "will not see five million unemployed again" during a slowdown in growth because job creation is faster than it used to be.

The government expects economic growth of 1.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, which will bring about a "slight...