German unemployment falls

Although unemployment rates tend to go down with the arrival of more jobs available outside in the spring, the news from Germany's Federal Labor Agency was promising on Thursday. The agency's data show that the unemployment rate went down to 7.2 percent in March, lower than the 7.4 percent recorded in February.

That represents 82,000 fewer unemployed people in Germany compared to last month. It's also 182,000 fewer unemployed compared to a year ago.

Frank-Jürgen Weise, head of the Federal Labor Agency, said the labor market had done well considering a shrinking economy in the final quarter of last year.

"The demand for workers remains high," he said.

The seasonally-adjusted figure for unemployment in Germany is 6.7 percent, an all-time low for since German reunification in 1990.

Germany is the eurozone's strongest economy, and the national unemployment figures are below the eurozone average of 10.1 percent, according to figures from the European Statistics Office published at the beginning of the month.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) indicated that economic recovery in European nations was lagging behind countries such as the United States and Japan. While economic growth in those two countries is projected by the OECD at around 2.7 and 3.4 percent respectively for the first half of 2012, France and Britain were expected to see contractions of 0.2 and 0.4 percent for the same period. Germany's economy is expected to grow slightly at first, but reach 1.5 percent in the second half of the year.

Other eurozone countries, such as Greece and Spain, with the two highest unemployment rates in the bloc, were not included in the study.

To help Europe's economy get back on track, the OECD's chief economist, Pier Carlo Padoan, recommended expanding the eurozone's bailout fund.

mz/sej (dpa, AFP, AP)