The German statistical office announced on Monday.
This was a good 78,000 or 1.4 percent less than a year earlier. The decline in June 2019 and thus to the pre-crisis level is even more pronounced at 213,000 or 3.8 percent. From May to June, however, the number of employees rose slightly by 0.1 percent. The statisticians emphasized that short-time workers count as employees and that changes are not reflected in employment here.
The number of employees fell compared to the previous year in almost all branches of the manufacturing industry. It fell the most in metal production and processing at 5.4 percent. There was also a significant decrease in mechanical engineering (-3.5%), in the manufacture of metal products (-3.2%), motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts (-2.7%), and electrical equipment (-1.8%) ) and rubber and plastic goods (-1.7%).
There has been little change in the number of employees at manufacturers of chemical products with minus 0.4 percent and in the manufacture of data processing equipment, electronic and optical products with plus 0.4 percent.
There was an increase in the number of employees at producers of food and feed (+ 5.8%). The reason for this is that from January 2021 many temporary employment contracts were converted into permanent contracts for employees of slaughterhouses and the staff has been recorded in these statistics since then. It was previously assigned to the service sector.
The industry was able to restart production after the sharp headwind in the first lockdown in 2020. In the meantime, however, many companies are struggling with delivery bottlenecks for important materials and therefore with increased prices.