BERLIN, June 3 (Xinhua) -- The unemployment rate in Germany increased "strongly" in May by 0.3 percentage point to 6.1 percent compared to the previous month as a result of the coronavirus crisis, the country's Federal Employment Agency (BA) said on Wednesday.
The number of unemployed people in Germany in May rose to around 2.8 million, according to the BA. Compared to the previous year, the number of unemployed people went up by 577,000.
"The labor market remains under heavy pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic," said Detlef Scheele, head of the BA.
Scheele stressed that the BA's financial reserves of 26 billion euros (29.2 billion U.S. dollars) would probably not be enough to shoulder the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on Germany's labor market.
According to BA, more than 10 million people in Germany were registered for short-time work in March and April. Preliminary BA figures showed that around two million employees received short-time work compensation in March.
"The use of short-time work in March was thus already well above the figures at the time of the 2008-2009 Great Recession," the BA noted. The record before the coronavirus crisis was in May 2009, when 1.44 million people were on short-time work during the financial crisis. Enditem
