BERLIN, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The number of unemployed people in Germany slightly rose by 7,000 to around 2.2 million in May, the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced on Wednesday.
"The labor market is beginning to show the first effects of the recent somewhat weaker economic development," commented Detlef Scheele, head of the German employment agency.
In the first quarter of 2019, Germany's gross domestic product grew by 0.4 percent. The German government is expecting GDP to grow by only 0.5 percent throughout the whole year 2019, nearly 1 percent less compared to last year, when Germany's economy grew by 1.4 percent.
Adjusted for seasonal effects, the number of unemployed Germans "significantly" increased by 60,000 compared to the previous month, BA stated.
The majority of this increase would be due to a special effect regarding "audit activities for job placement status" of recipients of unemployment benefits, according to the BA.
Since April 2019, job centers of the BA are obliged to check possibly incorrect data records of applicants, who are looking for a job through the BA. "The review has an increasing effect on unemployment," BA explained.
The German employment agency estimated that the number of unemployed people has increased by 30,000 to 40,000 because of these auditing activities alone.
The unemployment rate in Germany remained unchanged at 4.9 percent compared to the previous month.
However, in a year-on-year comparison the number of unemployed people in Germany still declined by around 80,000. At the same time last year, the unemployment rate stood at 5.2 percent.
Demand from companies in Germany for new employees would be "weakening noticeably at a high level", said BA head Scheele.
In May, around 792,000 vacant jobs were registered at the BA, marking a seasonal adjusted decrease of 6,000. The number of people in employment in Germany rose by around 32,000 compared with the previous month.
