BERLIN (AP) — Germany's unemployment rate ticked higher in June, official figures showed Wednesday, but the rise was slower than in the previous two months and extensive use of a government-backed short-time work program kept job losses down.
The unadjusted jobless rate, the headline rate in Germany, rose to 6.2% from 6.1% in May. It is up more than a percentage point since March, when it stood at 5.1%. The Federal Labor Agency said that 2.85 million people were registered as unemployed — 40,000 more than in May and 637,000 more than a year earlier.
In seasonally adjusted terms, unemployment was up to 6.4% from 6.3% in May. That rate stood at 5% in March.
Rises in unemployment in Germany and elsewhere in Europe have been moderate by international standards because employers are making heavy use of short-time work programs that allows them to keep employees on the payroll while they await better times.
In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the labor agency pays at least 60% of the salary of employees who are on reduced or zero hours.
The agency said Wednesday that it paid out for 6.83 million people in April, the most recent month for which it has figures. That compares with 2.49 million in March, the month when the pandemic hit Germany, and just 133,000 in February. Germany has 83 million inhabitants.
Germany started easing coronavirus restrictions in late April and the process has gathered pace since, but many restrictions still remain.
8 5G Stocks to Own in 2020
To understand 5G is to understand that the “G” stands for generation. Like the previous generations that came before it, 5G promises to enhance the way consumers and businesses experience the internet. Yes, 5G will certainly deliver faster connection speeds. But I wouldn’t be nearly as excited about this technology if it simply meant I could download a movie in seconds instead of minutes.
Where 5G offers the most intriguing benefit is in the way it promises to enhance our increasingly connected future. Autonomous cars, industrial automation, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will all be transformed by the increased speed and reduced latency of a 5G network.
One of the exciting aspects of 5G is the many ways investors can profit. There is an infrastructure being built to support the roll-out of this technology. It can’t just use the existing cell phone towers. There are also chips that have to be created to support mobile devices. The 5G revolution will also benefit software providers. And then, of course, there are the wireless providers who will be introducing 5G phones and tablets sometime in 2020.
Here’s the rub. The build-out of a 5G infrastructure is behind schedule. And some industry experts are suggesting the real growth from 5G may not come until 2021. But there’s no question that the infrastructure is being built now. And we’ve selected some stocks that look like they don’t already have the growth of the stock factored in.
View the "8 5G Stocks to Own in 2020".
