FRANKFURT (MNI) – German GDP could grow by more than 2% this year,
Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle said in an interview pre-released
Thursday evening.
“Germany has overcome the crisis faster than other countries and
GDP could grow by more than 2% this year,” he told German business daily
Handelsblatt.
In the years ahead, the economy will need to draw more heavily on
immigrant workers to meet the demand for skilled labor, the minister
predicted.
“With three million unemployed the problem is not so visible,” he
conceded. But “the longer the recovery continues, the larger the problem
becomes.”
A “shortage of skilled labor will become the key problem for the
German labor market in coming years and not unemployment,” he insisted.
Making the country attractive for foreign workers “is on top of my
agenda,” the minister assured.
Bruederle reiterated that he expected unemployment “soon” to fall
below three million from its current level of about 3.2 million.
The number of workers on short-time work schemes (“Kurzarbeit”)
should drop to below 100,000, he said.
The latest official data for short-time work go only to March, when
about 800,000 employees were still on such contracts. Analysts reckon
that the total has dropped considerably in the meantime.
“If the trend continues — and there are some indications of that
— I think a medium-term unemployment rate of 4% is entirely possible,”
Bruederle predicted. “In some regions we already have nearly full
employment.”
–Frankfurt bureau; +49-69-720142; tbuell@marketnews.com
[TOPICS: M$G$$$,MT$$$$,MGX$$$,M$X$$$]