OECD: German employment boost to end

Germany has been able to report a more or less steady rise in employment for quite some time now, but this period will come to an end shortly, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suggests in its latest job market outlook.

The report issued Thursday predicted German employment growth would enter a period of stagnation in the second half of this year and a cautious trend reversal might kick in in 2017.

With more and more migrants in the country, many of them would be jobless for an initial period, the OECD warned, adding that this would certainly weigh on jobs statistics. The organization urged Germany to increase its efforts to help migrants learn German and obtain qualifications required to get a job in the country.

According to its own calculations, the OECD said Germany now had a jobless rate of just 4.3 percent, hitting the lowest level in two and a half decades.

It also pointed out that real wages in Germany had grown considerably since 2011 in contrast to many other OECD nations.

Moving in the right direction

Employment in advanced economies in general was slowly improving, the OECD said in its outlook. It expected the jobs gap created by the global financial crisis of 2008 to close by 2017 across member countries.

At its lowest point, only 58.6 percent of the working population in advanced economies was employed, that's 2.2 percent lower than before the crisis.

The OECD stressed that a quicker recovery had been stalled by a sluggish global economy overall, marked by low investment and weak productivity gains.

Alongside Germany, Chile, Hungary, Israel and Turkey were cited as nations, which had seen employment more than recover in recent years, while Greece, Ireland and Spain in particular were predicted to face large jobs gaps, which were set to even extend through 2017.

hg/jd (dpa, OECD)