Back in August and September 2022, the German unemployment rate was only 5.5%. Then Germany plunged into recession. Here’s Bloomberg:

Germany suffered its first recession since the start of pandemic, extinguishing hopes that Europe’s top economy could escape such a fate after the war in Ukraine sent energy prices soaring.

First-quarter output shrank 0.3% from the previous three months following a 0.5% drop between October and December, the statistics office said Thursday. Its initial estimate, last month, was for stagnation.

As a result of this “recession”, the German unemployment rate has soared to 5.6%.

Perhaps this data sheds a bit of light on the point I was making in my previous post.

PS. If you prefer the other German unemployment measure (the harmonized unemployment rate), it’s fallen from 3.1% to 2.8% during the “recession”.

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