German headline unemployment falls in April

Headline unemployment in Germany fell in April, as is usual in the spring, but was slightly higher in adjusted terms, official data showed on Wednesday. The German jobless rate, which measures the proportion of people registered as unemployed against the working population as a whole, slipped to 7.0 percent in April from 7.2 percent in March. The data were provided on a raw or unadjusted basis by the Federal Labour Agency in Nuremberg. In raw terms, the total number of people out of work declined by 64,632 in April from March to stand at 2.963 million, the agency said in a statement. Unemployment tends to fall in the spring as sectors such as the construction sector take on workers again with the end of the cold winter weather. Seasonally-adjusted numbers, which iron out such distortions, rose by 19,000 in April from March and the seasonally-adjusted jobless rate was unchanged at 6.8 percent.