BERLIN, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- The number of unemployed German citizens rose to 2.227 million in December 2019, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced on Friday.
"The labor market remained largely stable at the end of the year," said Detlef Scheele, head of the German employment agency. "However, traces of the economic weakness are visible."
The number of unemployed increased by 47,000 from November and by 18,000 compared to the previous year. The unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage points to 4.9 percent in December, according to the BA.
On Friday, the agency also published the 2019 annual review. On average, 2.267 million German citizens had been registered as unemployed in Germany, a decrease of 73,000 year-on-year.
Both unemployment as well as underemployment had continued to fall on average over the entire year due to the good development on the labor market into the first four months of 2019, according to BA.
In the later course of the year, the weaker economy and other factors had prevented the positive development of the first four months to continue, noted BA.
Although the number of employed German citizens continued to increase in 2019, employment growth did not reach the previous years' levels, according to BA.
