Germany Employment Maps

[Franknburger]

Drivers of Employment (cont'd)

Some more notes on sector-specific employment change:

• Construction: While there has been some employment growth in building and road construction, almost 90% of the job creation relates to 'other construction related activities'. Percentwise, growth was strongest for 'site preparation works', followed by 'specialised constructive works", and "installation works".
• Metallurgy and metal processing:Stable employment for iron/steel production and primary processing, slight job losses for manufacture of heating elements, strong losses for manufacture of weapons and ammunition. Biggest gains, both relatively and in absolute numbers (nearly 30,000), for specific mechanical components and metal parts (->automotive, machine-building), followed by constructive steel elements (+12.000) 

Now, put together site preparation, constructive steel elements, specific mechanical components, specialised constructive works, installation works, add power generation equipment (considerable job growth, see above), and you get: wind power generation, with an estimated job creation of somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 (plus a good part of the 45,000 additional jobs created in engineering consultancy).

Moreover, agricultural employment has increased by 6.6% (12,000 persons), which I suppose has less to do with more people working on the fields and in the stables, but primarily with the boom in biogas and solar installations (plus some wind power generation) on larger farms.


Diagram translation: Farm investment in renewable energy generation: Total volume of planned investment between 2009 and 2011, by technology (16 bn €). Source: German Farmer Association.

While i am at energy:

• Mining Almost all of the job loss relates to unerground anthracite mining. Until 2018, coal mining subsidies are being phased out, and the five mines that were still working in 2010 (3 on the Ruhr, one on the Saar, one north of Münster) are gradually being closed down. Employment in lignite mining went down slightly by around 350 persons (-3.2%), while natural oil and gas extraction recorded some employment gain, especially for related services (this may, however, rather refer to drilling for geothermal energy sources than to natural oil and gas).
• Energy and utilities: Considerable job losses in telecommunication (-9.3%), the mineral oil industry, and power generation, some loss in water supply and long-distance heating, partly offset by strong job growth in natural gas supply, and in sewage/ waste-water treatment.

[Franknburger]

2010 to 2012 emplyoment change:

The map below shows how the sectoral changes have affected employment in each region. The map is according to residence, not to work place, so it captures effects of commuting to nearby cities on suburban and exurban areas. I have selected March 31st as comparison date in order to eliminate seasonal effects as much as possible. 



The regional patterns are similar to those in the previous maps:

• Even though most of Eastern Germany has benefitted from overall employment growth, it has in general performed far below average. Only the Berlin periphery, the Thuringian Basin, the Saxony city triangle and a few other larger cities such as Magdeburg and Rostock display employment growth that is comparable to the West.
• In the West, growth has been strongest in the South (Bavaria and Baden-Würtemberg, and in the North (Hamburg, Bremen, Northern Lower Saxony).
• Between these two growth zones, there is a belt of below-average growth that extends from southern Lower Saxony through much of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate to the French border.

How did sectoral growth translate into this geographic pattern? First - spot the cities. Pretty easy, as they tend to show the highest overall growth. Employment growth in business services, retail, transport, real estate-related services (cleaning, security, gardening etc.), even in health & care - all of these are primarily urban sectors, and there is something in it for every qualification level.

Now, a more difficult task: Which cities cannot be spot that easily? Right - the Ruhr! Job losses in coal mining, no employment growth in steel production and basic metal processing, and, consequently, little growth in retail and transport (among others).

Note also that, unlike for most other metro areas, job growth in the Rhine-Main area (Frankfurt), the Rhine-Neckar area (Ludwigshafen-Mannheim), and the Rhineland (Düsseldorf-Cologne-Bonn) is mostly confined to the cities but does not extend to the exurbs. This is due to the financial sector (->Frankfurt) and the chemical industry (BASF Ludwigshafen, Bayer Leverkusen & Krefeld in the Rhineland) having only grown slightly in employment. For the Rhineland, as well as for East Westphalia, stagnation of the textile & clothing sectors also plays a role.

[Franknburger]

Well, this one took a bit longer than expected to prepare. This is a mapping of the major industrial sectors that have been driving employment growth, namely automotive, machinery & equipment, and medical apparatus & devices, in order to trace the employment gains as displayed in the previous map back to their origins.

Note that the division between "car part" and "machine-building" counties is not always clear-cut. Especially in South-Western Germany, these two sectors tend to develop alongside. Products like ball-bearings, springs, couplings, or power generators may be used in automotives as well as in machinery, so the allocation of related employment to any of the two sectors is somehow arbitrary.



Comparison with the employment change map above demonstrates the importance of the automotive sector for the employment boom. The following "car regions" stand out in particular:

• South-eastern Bavaria: Munich (BMW HQ), Ingolstadt (Audi), BMW factories in Landshut, Regensburg, Dingolfing and Wackersdorf, and vatious car part suppliers around and in-between these locations. The belt extends into Upper Austria, with, among others, the BMW  and  GM factories in Steyr.
• Hannover-Wolfsburg-Braunschweig: The main VW factories, and the surrounding belt of component suplliers that is dominated by Hannover-based Continental (No. 3 car part supplier in the world). Braunschweig &-Salzgitter are also major locations of the German railtway industry.
• Stuttgart-Heilbronn: Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Audi (Neckarsulm), plus Bosch (No.1 car part supplier in the world)
• Rhineland   Cologne (Ford), Mercedes-Benz (Düsseldorf), extending into the Ruhr (Opel Bochum), and also connected supply-wise to the Siemens high-speed train works in Krefeld.
• Saar-Lorraine; Ford Saarlouis, Opel Kaiserslautern, smart Hambach (F), Ciitroen Metz (F), and a surrounding belt of component suppliers
• Kassel-Eisenach: Kassel, a traditional railway industry town, holds a major VW plant as well as a Mercedes-Benz component factory. Pre-unification subsidies for regions along the inner-German border lead a number of car-part suppliers to set up factories in the region (also for deliveries to other major car producing areas). After unification, Opel bought back and modernised their original works in Eisenach
• North-Sea coast In order to facilitate export, and to capture on metal-working know-how from abundant shipyard workers, VW (Emden) and Mercedes-Benz (Bremen, Hamburg) set up plants in major ports. Much of the German airplane industry, including the main Airbus assembly plant in Hamburg, is also found here.
• Saxony has traditionally been a major automotive location, and VW already in the early 1990s took over the heart of the GDR car industry in Zwickau and Chemnitz. During the last decade, BMW (Leipzig), Porsche (Leipzig) and VW (Dresden) have set up additional plants in the State. The region interlinks with the Czech automotive industry, especially VW-controlled Skoda in Pilsen. There are also major railway factories in Dresden, Bautzen and Görlitz (Bombardier).
• Upper Rhine: The main Opel factory in Rüsselsheim, west of Frankfurt, Daimler-Benz truck factories in Rastatt and Würth. To an extent, the Peugeot plant in Mulhouse (F) might as well be included here.

Let me already draw your attention to the fact that a few of the locations above (and their surrounding car part supplier belts), namely Bochum, Rüsselsheim and Eisenach, have under-performed employment-wise until 2012,  These are the main Opel plants, suffering from the brand's severe market share losses in Germany.  There is more trouble to come, as you will see in later maps ....

[minionofmidas]

Who's the car parts producer within Frankfurt itself?

[Franknburger]

Who's the car parts producer within Frankfurt itself?

ATE (Continental Group). Plus Fiat Germany and Kia Europe (but these two are only administrations, no production).

[minionofmidas]

Ah, that areal. I never noticed that's a single factory rather than just a "Gewerbegebiet"! Can't recall ever hearing of the thing (a subsidiary of Continental apparently), in fact.

Those Frankfurt and Eschborn addresses are not far apart, btw:

http://goo.gl/maps/sJxco

Of course, there used to be a Mercedes plant in Frankfurt, too, just northeast of what's shown here. But that got closed down around the time I was born and replaced with new residential housing (north of Heerstraße).

[Franknburger]

For anybody interested in digging a bit deeper into regional economic structures, here are a few of the sources that I used in preparing the industry map above (aside from checking county- and city-level Wikipedia, official and Chamber pages). Unfortunately, most documents are only available in German:

• Germany: Prognos Zukunftsatlas 2009 (interactive, includes county-level information on major sectors, even though comparison with actual development indicates some weaknesses of their general approach)
• The Federal Employment Agency provides fairly up-to-date county-level employment statistics with basic sectoral breakdown. Unfortunately, you have to download them county-by-county, and they have in 2010 changed their regional breakdown, so you can't do any time series.
• Great regionalised maps for Regensburg/ Oberpfalz and Upper Bavaria, which are based on value chains instead of using the traditional sector approach (i.e. tyre manufacturing is included in "automotive" rather than in "Rubber & Plastics"). Check the respective Chamber's websites - there are a lot of other good maps!
• The Oldenburg Chamber of Commerce provides decent sectoral and county-level reports, and an interactive mapping tool for regional monitoring (which, for my taste, is too-much agro-based and could provide some more economic and sector data, instead, but is still among the better data sources).
• The Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Exonomy has prepared a great Industrial Compass (scroll down the download list at the right-hand side, at the bottom you find regional analyses for each of their five planning regions that include county maps)

Otherwise, I was pretty shocked about the low level of consideration that is being given by state ministries / agencies and Chambers to county-level economics. Among the better sources are:

• The Zukunfts-Agentur Brandenburg (sectoral & sub-regional profiles), 
• The Saarland Economic Promotion Agency (sector profiles, in English, with some regional informaton, e.g. on the location of major companies,)
• Stuttgart region monitoring report (rather generic, only superficial sector analysis, but includes various interesting maps),
• A recent Chamber study on North-Hesse/ Marburg (also rather generic, but with nice Germany-wide transport / accessibility maps inside),
• The Bavarian Industrial Report 2012 (not going down to county level, but at least including some analysis on the Regierungsbezirk level),
• Last but not least, the HeLaBa does some decent research on regional and sectoral economics. part of which is also available in English. Their "Lists of Largest Employers" proved a fair source to trace back sector structures to county levels in Thuringia and Hesse.
  

There are probably a number of sources that I have overlooked. Any respective hints are welcome.

[Franknburger]

I was distracted a bit by the Italian election, but its time to get on with this thread before the next unemployment report comes out.

While car and car part manufacturing explains a lot of the recent employment boost, a few questions remain unanswered:

Why has most of Eastern Germany underperformed employmentwise?
Well, for once, thr vehicle industry is not nearly as dominant as in the West. This does not mean that the East has been completely de-industrialised (though, in fact, it has been in a few regions). Rather, the industrial base is focused on other sectors which either have been much less dymanic (e.g. the chemical industry north of Leipzig) or are still facing structural problems, as is ship-building along much of the Baltic Sea coast. Nevertheless, industrial employment has also increased quite substantially across most of Eastern Germany.
What has, however, gone down quite substantial is employment in the public and employment sectors. Available data does not allow to trace this decline in sufficient detail. However, I suppose it has on one hand to do with army reform - the 2010 abolishment of the army draft has been accompanied by closure of various smaller army camps that primarily served training purposes, and these were mostly found in less densely populated areas in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, as well as Schleswig-Holstein. [Note in this context also the visible impact of US troop reductions in Ramstein on employment in south-eastern Rhineland-Palatinate].
Secondly, territorial reform in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Pomerania has allowed to rationalise local-level public administration (as has the ongoing population decrease across most parts of Eastern Germany) in order to reduce local and state-level budget deficits. The same has obviously happened in primary and secondary education (considering demographic trends in the East, this is less problematic than one would think at first). Employment decrease has been expecially pronounced for "other education", which is everything outside childcare and formal education. Naturally, a decreasing number of children and youths also means less demand for things like ballet, piano and driving schools. However, I strongly suspect that most of the decline relates to cutting down public retraining schemes for long-term unemployed.
Last but not least, except for the major cities, employment in the trade and hospitality sectors has at best stagnated, often even gone down slightly. The reasons are pretty abvious: low labour market dynamics, outmigration, plus purchasing-power drains  triggered by the cloture of army training camps.

What is behind the strong growth in the North-West?
There is some vehicle manufacturing in the region, most notably the VW plant in Emden, and airplane industry in and to the north-west of Bremen. However, vehicle manufacturing is much less important than, e.g., in south-eastern Bavaria, and can only explain part of the strong employment growth in the region.
There are two other developments going on. For once, this is one of the heartlands of the German agro-processing, especially meat-processing industry (the other one, which is more on dairy, being the foothills of the Alps). While for Germany overall, agricultural and agro-processing employment has only grown slightly, it has been pretty strong in the Oldenburg region, as in the Alpine foothills, on the expense of other regions, especially the North-East. The North-West also has a strong agricultural machinery industry, which obviously benefitted from local agro-based growth, but is also exporting heavily. And, as everybody can imagine, agro-based growth isn't bad for employment in trade and transport, either.
Well, and then ..

[Franknburger]

Gross Employment from Renewables

Legend: light blue=wind, yellow=solar, green=biomass, red=geothermal, dark blue=water

The map above represents the results of a recent study on gross employment effects from renewables. The figures include employment in final assembly as well as in component manufacturing, plus installation, and operation & maintenance. Looks like a decent piece of work, even though it seems that exports (especially of components such as power generators), as well as certain services (e.g. technical and financial engineering) have not been fully covered. I also tend to believe that their input-output model overestimates metalurgical supply to solar, and underestimates supply to wind energy generation.

Note that the states vary considerably in their 'energy mix'. Wind energy concentrates along the coast, solar more towards the South. Especially Brandenburg and Thuringia are quite depending on solar (it is dominating in Hesse and Saxony as well, but these states' overall employment reliance on renewables is much lower). The map is based on 2011 data. In the meantime, however, increasing import pressure, and a cut in installation subsidies, has sent German manufacurers into crisis and already resulted in a number of plant closures over the last months.

It's different with wind, where domestic and export demand is still strong. The major manufacturing locations stand out from their surrounding with above-average employment gains:

• Aurich-based Enercon, German market leader and number 5 in the world, has become the largest enterprise in East Frisia, where it operates several component and assembly plants
• Danish world market leader Vestas has several production sites in Germany, the largest of which are in Lübeck and Magdeburg (Enercon is also having a plant in Magdeburg)
• GE Wind Energy (No. 6 worldwide) has its European headquarters and main production site in the Emsland, south of East Frisia.
• RePower (No. 7 worldwide) operates from headquarters in Hamburg and Husum (North Frisia), with plants in Husum, Bremerhaven and to the north-east of Berlin.
• Nordex, with headquarters in Hamburg and production in Rostock, is slightly smaller, but still large enough to have become Mecklenburg-Pomerania's largest company by turnover. Between 2009 and 2011, they increased employment by almost 20%.

Further, medium-sized manufacturers are based in Bremerhaven, Wismar, Rostock, Münster and north-eastern Rhineland-Palatinate.

As such, the breakdown by state is actually misleading, since most of the employment effects in Lower Saxony stem from the North-West of the state, where not only manufacturing of windpower generators, but also biofuel generation concentrates. Bavaria and Baden-Würtemberg are primarily coming in as component supplers, though Baden-Würtemberg has traditionally been the heartland of solar energy generation in Germany.

--
The text has been editied considerably to reflect new findings (see the following post).

[Franknburger]

Alright, this happens if you don't check your sources carefully - I discovered that the shading scale in previous post's map is based on absolute rather than relative numbers. So, I have prepared maps that show the share of renewables in manufacturing as well as in total employment.



I had not realised how important renewables have become for most of Eastern Germany. No wonder Merkel has become a supporter of renewables - otherwise, she might have gotten in quite some danger to lose her constituency in north-eastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

[Franknburger]

The bottom line:

So, where does all that lead us too? Below is a map of the unemployment change between Jan 10 and Jan 13:



At first sight, this looks like a pretty impressive East German success story (and that is probably also what the German Government will try to sell in the upcoming election campaign). But, be careful!

Look at top-performing Ostprignitz-Ruppin in northern Brandenburg, for example: There has been some employment growth over the recent years - by 0.9% until July 2012 (last date for which employment figures are availble), when excluding seasonal effects. To that date, employable population had decreased by 3.0% due to outmigration and retirement.
The unemployment decrease in Western Saxony looks great, isn't it? Unfortunately, the region also stands out as one of the largest contingent outmigration region in Germany, with 2.3% population loss over 2010 and 2011. What about southern Thuringia? Same story - in 2010/2011, the city of Suhl recorded the largest population loss in all of Germany, 3.3%.

This does not mean there are no "success stories" for Eastern Germany at all. The Saxony city triangle, most of the Berlin periphery, and parts of the Thuringian Basin have experienced population and labour force growth, while at the same time significantly reducing unemployment. The same applies to the cities of Rostock and Magdeburg (though not to their peripheries). Overall, however, the economing upswing in the East has been much more localized that a look at unemployment trends alone suggests.

The opposite applies to Bavaria, Baden-Würtemberg, and the Hamburg metro, where rather moderate drops in unemployment need to be related to strong population and labour force growth, and already low unemployment in early 2010.

That leaves us with the real 'problem childs', where unemployment has hardly decreased, parly even gone up: Parts of North-Rhine Westphalia (especially the Ruhr and areas to the west and south of it), Rhineland-Palatinate, the Saar, and southern Hesse (in fact, most of Hesse when considering outmigration across much of northern Hesse).
The reasons for this area's underperformance should have become clear by now:

• No employment growth in the financial sector (which, aside from the Frankfurt metro, also affects the region bordering Luxemburg);
• Core industrial sectors such as the chemical industry underperforming employment-wise;
• Coal mines closing at the Ruhr and the Saar,
• Little engagement in renewables, and
• reliance on the "wrong" automobile manufacturers, namely Ford and Opel.

This is quite a number of factors coming together. Nevertheless, if I had a state election upcoming this year, as is the case in Hesse, I would start praying for favourable employment reports over the coming months. Otherwise, it should get pretty difficult to sell the economic policies of the last years as a success.

[Franknburger]

So this is the uemplyoment map resulting from 2 1/2 years of employment growth, and a few months of sideward movement:



What in 2010 had been a low-unemployment zone in Bavaria and Baden Würtemberg, has now virtually reached [ur=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employmentl]full employment [/url] http://, i.e below 3.5% unemployment, in many parts, and also extended outreach northwards into eastern Hesse and Southern Thuringia.
The 2010 north-western below average unemployment belt has turned into a low-unemplyoment zone, and, thanks to VW, a third low-uemployment zone has emerged around Wolfsburg.

This has made the "problem areas" in the West, namely the Ruhr, the southern NRW Rineland, the Saar, and south-central Lower Saxony stand out more prominently from the remainder of the West than three years ago. In principle, you might add the Lower Saony and Schleswig Holstein coast to that list, but since these areas are strongly tourism-based and thus have considerable seasonal employment variation, I tend to await late spring before final judgement.

In the East, much of the Berlin metro, and the Thuringian Basin, have managed alignment to the west, i.e. there are not more of a 'problem area' anymore than, say, the Ruhr, and the Sacony city triangle is on the best was to follow their example. Otherwise, unemplyoment is still a mjor problem across the East, and the partial relief over the last years has more to do with out-migration than with local growth. 
While s

[Franknburger]

Alright, that was the baseline stuff. Now towards the more recent trends: Below is a map of the one-year unemployment trend as per end of January [Note: this was the third month in a row which had unemployment increasing slightly yoy]



As you see, the positive trend has been continuing for most of Eastern Germany, but the West, especially Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate, have been taking quite some hits.

In some cases, it is quite easy to name the culprits:

• The bankruptcy of Schlecker, Germany's largest drug-store chain with more than 5,000 chain stores across the country, costed more than 30,000 jobs and should be the main reason for the dominating pattern of minor but widespread employment loss. The headquarter location, Ehingen, west of Ulm on the Baden-Würtemberg-Bavarian border has obviously been hit a bit harder.
• Solar crisis: Excess world market capacities, and a cut in German subsidies for solar installations, are sending one after the other German manufacturer into insolvency. The 'solar valley', in southern Sachsen-Anhalt, home of heavy-weight Q-cells, has been hit hardest. Various other cities and their surrounding regions, including Frankfurt/ Oder, Erlangen, Aachen, Göttingen, Koblenz, Darmstadt, Dresden, Erfurt, and Berlin have as well seen local solar manufacturers collapsing during 2012'
• Automotive: Sluggish demand is affecting car manufacurers, and has especially hit Ford and Opel. While core staff is typically maintained (though partly set on short-time as, e.g., by Ford in Cologne and Saarlouis), suppliers and especially those on time work are less lucky. The two companies manufacturing locations and/or their surroundings, namely Saarlouis, Cologne, Bochum, Kaiserslautern, Rüsselsheim and Eisenach, are among the regions with the strongest rises in unemployment.
• Ship-building:Similar story as automotive. In 2012, the P + S shipyards in Stralsund and Wolgast (both in Western Pomerania) went bankrupt.

For other counties, reasons for rising unemployment are less obvious. Some of the local issues I have identified are the takeover of the Flender group in Kleve (Dutch border) by Siemens, the Adler textile chain struggling (HQ south of Aschaffenburg). and several smaller furniture manufacturers in Lippe carrying out lay-offs.

[Franknburger]

New unemployment figures for February:

According to official statistics, unemployment in February 2013 increased by 18,000 against January 2013 and by 46.295 against February 2012. By some statistical miracle, this increase left the unemployment rate unchanged at 7.4%, the same value as last month and in February 2012.

Officially reported changes against January at the state level have also only been minor. Hamburg, where the unemployment rate decreased by 0.2%, performed best. For all other states changes remained within +/- 0.1%.
 
County-wise, there have been a handful of larger changes. The best-performing county was Cham in Bavaria (0.8% decrease), followed by the city of Kaufbeuren (0.6% decrease) - these two counties had strong unemployment increase in January, so it is mostly reversal to the mean. The biggest increase occured in Oldenburg county (+0.5%). Compared to the January unemployment map, 22 (out of 402) counties would change shading.

Since I don't know whether anybody is following this thread regularly, I tend to skip preparing February maps, and instead wait for March, when seasonal patterns should pick up and effect more substantial map changes. If there is interest in February map updates, please leave a comment.

[Franknburger]

As the car industry is very important for the German labour market (more than one-third of all motor vehicles produced in Europe come from Germany), here some look at the latest market trends:



Source with additional data and background on market trends

Since 2007, of the major manufacturers in Germany, Opel and Ford have both suffered heavy sales decreases and market share losses. Mercedes held its market shares, but saw their sales go down in line with the overall market decline. BMW and VW held relatively steady, gaining market share while nevertheless slightly losing turnover. The only European brands that grew in the declining market were Audi, Skoda, Mini and Land Rover.

2012 showed essentially a continuation of these longer-term trends, with the overall market decreasing by 8.2%, and Ford and Opel continuing to lose market shares at the expense of VW, which, however, also saw their sales decrease by 4.6%. BMW held their sales steady, as was Skoda, while Audi grew by 3.1% and Mercedes even by 4.7%.

January 2013 saw Ford continuing its decline, while Opel could  increase sales (+4.5), mostly due to the UK market growing. VW recorded 12% sales decline, Audi and Skoda lost slightly: However, this was overcompensated by strong exports to the USA and China, which resulted in VW reporting 2012 as the year with the highest sales in company history. Mercedes (+4.7) and especially BMW (+9.8 )  grew against the overall market trend.  BMW reported further turnover growth in February 2013, while Mercedes sales dipped down after the January peak.

These trends should keep the labour market strong in Bavaria (VW, Audi), Lower Saxony (VW) and Saxony (VW, BMW).  At Ruhr, Rhine and Saar, and in the Frankfurt metro, where the Ford and Opel plants are located, however, unemployment might go up further in March.

[Franknburger]

Update on the solar manufacturing crisis: Yesterday, Bosch announced complete withdrawal from the solar sector. All operations of Bosch Solar, located in Arnstadt, Thuringia (30 km south of Erfurt), including production, distribution and R&D shall be terminated until spring 2014. This puts 1,800 jobs (4% of the district's total employment) at stake. Considering secondary effects on retail, transport, business services etc., this is a huge blow for the regional economy and labour market. 

[Franknburger]

New unemployment figures for March 2013 are out. Unemployment decreased slightly by 58.000 against February. Unemployment rate is down 0.1  to 7.3. Compared to March 2012, unemployment has increased by 70,000 (+0.1 %).



The Federal Employment Agency comments "Spring recovery only setting in slowly", blaming the increase compared to last year on bad weather (we still have snow here).
I rather think the data confirms that the 2010-2012 employment boom has reached its end and the labour market is now moving sideward. Nevertheless, compared to most EU neighbours, Germany is still doing rather well. Even Switzerland, Austria and Luxemburg have since March 2012 experienced unemployment increases larger than the German one. The only neighbour that could reduce unemployment was Denmark.

[Franknburger]

The pattern of unemployment increases and decreases does hardly look seasonal, except for a few resource-extracting regions, especially in north-eastern Bavaria.

Instead, we have clear regional patterns:

• Continued employment creation in the Berlin metro, the Saxony city triangle and around Wolfsburg (Volkswagen). Northern Thuringia also still looks good, but that may unfortunately change when the recently announce closures of several solar module plants become effective.
• Windpower generator manufacturing along much of the coast, and the airplane industry south-west of Hamburg and north of Oldenburg continue to create jobs as well .
• The Bavarian job creation engine, and especially BMW in south-eastern Bavaria, starts stuttering. The same applies to Opel in Eisenach (western Thuringia) and near to Frankfurt, and Ford in Cologne.
• The Saar is hit heavily (1.2% unemployment rate increase in Saarbrucken and Saarlouis), probably by a combination of employment decreases at Ford Saarlouis and Opel Kaiserslautern, problems at French car manufacturers in neighbouring Moselle (which affect suppliers at the Saar), and its overall exposure to the economic downturn in France and Luxemburg.

[Franknburger]

Summer is coming - stone quarries in the Bavarian Forest are free of snow, roads have to be repaired, there is still an airport to be completed in Berlin, the coast is getting ready for their summer guests, and there is a lot of work to do in the ornamental plant nurseries west of Hamburg, on Mecklenburg fields, and in the vineyards along Mosel, Rhine and Main. In short - its time for a map update:



And suddenly, things look pretty well employment-wise on the coast (even most of the Mecklenburg coast), in the Bavarian forest, and on the Mosel.  While still struggling heavily with the local shipyard crisis, Vorpommern-Greifswald could, at least over the summer, pass on the red lantern to Frankfurt / Oder and Bremerhaven.

 As Brandenburg and Thuringia so far seem to withstand the solar panel manufacturing crisis surprisingly well, other regions with structural problems are becoming more obvious, namely Bremen / Bremerhaven / Wilhelmshaven, the Saar, and. most prominently, North-Rhine Westfalia, especially the Ruhr. NRW now accounts for over 25% of Germany's unemployment, more than in all East German states (excluding Berlin) combined.

Overall, seasonal employment has brought the unemployment rate down to 6.8% (in March, it was still 7.3%). However, this is probably as good as it will get. Even the Federal Employment Agency can't dismiss anymore signs of recession on the labour market. Compared to May 2012, unemployment has risen by 0.1% - not dramaticaly, but this is the 7th month in a row with an unemployment increase compared to the previous year.

[Franknburger]

June 2013 unemployment figures are out. Unemployment is down by some 72,000 to 6.6%. Most of the decrease is seasonal, Compared to June 2012, unemployment has increased by 66.000. Between April 2012 and April 2013, 373.000 new jobs have been created - quite a lot, but insufficient to fully absorb the current growth of the German labour force. Interestingly, youth unemployment is below average (5.5%), the highest unemployment is in the 55-65 age group (7.9%).

The map by counties has not changed much from May, except for a few coastal counties, which by now should have reached their seasonal employment peak. Nevertheless, as I prepared it anyway, I might as well post it here.This should really be the best it can get, considering that the labour market is moving sideward, and from July on, a fresh batch of youngsters that have finished, school, university and vocational training will enter the labour market.



Note that Eurostat has not yet published its May figures, so the neighbouring countries are still coloured according to their unemployment in April.

[Franknburger]

As seasonal employment is traditionally peaking in June, I thought another map of employment changes since the beginning of this year might be interesting:



Actually, this is two maps in one. You see the typical seasonal employment gains along the coast, in the Mosel wine-growing district, across resource-extracting areas such as the Bavarian Forest and the Harz mountains, and in large-scale farming in the North German plain.

In addition, you also see the non-seasonal winners and losers over the last months. The winning side includes Saxony, the "Volkswagen belt" (Hannover-Braunschweig-Wolfsburg), and, once more, South-Eastern Bavaria.

Losers: Several larger cities in North-Rhine Westfalia, including Mönchengladbach and Krefeld (railway industry), and Bochum and Gelsenkirchen (probably related to the upcoming closure of the Opel plant in Bochum). Considering they are as well wine-growing regions, the Saar and the Middle Rhine should have seen stronger seasonal gains. Last but not least, even though Gross Gerau county (main Opel plant in Russelsheim) seems to be recovering, things aren't looking well employment wise in Southern Hesse (and north-western Baden-Würtemberg). Smells like trouble ahead for the ruling CSU-FDP coalition in the Hesse state elections this September.

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July figures are out: Unemployment increases by 50,000. This seasonal increase is usual - Schools and vocational training contracts finish in summer, and many absolvents only continue education, or take up a job, in September / October. In fact, the seasonal increase has been less pronounced this year than in the past. This, however, is partly due to school holidays in major states, namely NRW, Baden-Würtemberg and Bavaria, having only commenced right now, so most of their absolvents will only show up in the August data.

Here is the July map:



Not much change, especially not in the south. The seasonal effect affects especially cities, where larger companies tend to train more youngsters than they need for their own demand. The same applies to the region around Wolfsburg (VW & VW supplier training). Many counties in the East actually saw unemployment decreasing slightly.

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There is not much point to map the Juny to July unemployment change, as the seasonal (education finished) effects are only included for the North, but not yet for the South. I will probably come back to it in early September, when the effect will be included for the southern states and NRW as well.

In the meantime, let's have a look at the longer-term development over the last three years, which will be one of the yardsticks for voters to evaluate the economic performance of the Federal and state governments.



Obviously, the Bavarian CSU/FDP state government does not have to fear much from that side. Already pretty low unemployment has receded further over the last three years. Hesse, especially Southern Hesse and the Kassel area, may be a bit different in that respect. However, note in this context that strong labour market development was not sufficient for the CDU/FDP state government in Lower Saxony to get re-elected this March.

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The previous map suggests quite some success with job creation in the East, especially in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony.

Well, not so fast! Let's look a bit more into labour demand and supply. County-level employment figures are only published quarterly, with six months delay, so the latest data available (and the last update to get before the Federal election) is from December 2012. Below is a map of the employment change = job creation between December 2009 and December 2012:



So, yes, there has been some job creation in the East, especially in and around Berlin, in Saxony and Thuringia, and in other larger cities such as Rostock and Magdeburg. However, with a few exceptions such as Leipzig, Dresden and Rostock, job creation in the East has remained below average. Moreover, there is a belt of peripheral countries around the Berlin metro where job creation has been only marginal or job loss has even continued.

Aside from Berlin, the main engines of job creation continue to be in the West, especially in Southern Bavaria (continuing to the Lake of Constance and beyond), the Hamburg metro, the North-West (East Frisia - Oldenburg - Münsterland), the Rhineland, and the Hannover-Brunswick-Wolfsburg and Stuttgart-Heilbronn-Karlsruhe urban belts.
Aside from most of Eastern Germany, the Ruhr and the Saar (plus southern Palatinate) have been under-performing as well in terms of job creation.

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Finally, a look at labour supply (actually I have taken employed plus unemployed as a proxy).



Here, the situation across most of the East is even looking bleaker - net decrease in labour force supply, either due to over-aging, or to outmigration, or most likely a combination of both. The main directions are also apparent - people go where the jobs are, namely Bavaria, Berlin, the Hamburg, Hannover-Wolfsburg and Stuttgart metros, plus a few other larger cities such as Cologne, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Freiburg and Munster. The north-west is a bit special - it traditionally has the highest reproduction rate in Germany, so a good part of the labour force increase there should be home-grown.