Press. voanews.com
Germany,
Europe's most robust economy, said Thursday that its unemployment rate fell to
5.3 percent in November, the lowest figure since West and East Germany were
unified in 1990. Even as Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Berlin politicians
struggle to form a coalition government, the German economy remains strong,
with a months-long dip in the country's jobless rate and solid demand for
German products from other countries.
The German
report came as Eurostat, the statistics agency for the European Union, said the
jobless rate for the 19-nation eurozone bloc that uses the euro currency
dropped to 8.8 percent in October. It was the lowest figure since January 2009,
when Europe and countries across the world were in the midst of a steep
recession.
The German and
European jobless rates trail those in the United States, the world's largest
economy, where unemployment has dropped to 4.1 percent, a 17-year low. But the
U.S. and European numbers point to steady improvement that had been slow to
emerge after the devastating job losses and high unemployment seven to nine
years ago.
Eurostat said
more than 14 million people remained out of work, but that was 1.5 million
fewer than a year ago. In Spain, the jobless rate has been cut from about 25
percent to 16.7 percent.
European Central
Bank President Mario Draghi said that while wages still are not increasing
much, they could rise in the coming months as the continent's economy continues
to rebound. Patrick Chovanex, chief strategist at New York-based Silvercrest
Asset Management, told VOA the U.S. is in the eighth year of its recovery.
"It's a
recovery that has kind of waxed and waned," he said. "One of the
things that has been happening over the past couple years is that different
parts of the economy were waxing and waning out of sequence with one another.
So housing would be strong while manufacturing would be weak, and then vice
versa. Every so often they happen to coincide. "Right now we're seeing a
pattern of several elements of the economy being strong at once. Hopefully,
that will continue."