Germany, the labour market takes three years to recover

The “will, of course, last until 2022 or 2023 before returning to normal level”, he added.

The unemployment rate in Germany stood at 6.2% in June, equivalent to about 2.85 million unemployed people, of whom about 640,000 blame the current crisis for their situation.

Scheele expects unemployment to rise during the summer, as is usually the case, although he does not expect the number of unemployed to rise to over three million.

He said the current crisis is more linked to the virus than to economic or structural causes, which means that a recovery can start immediately once specific factors start moving in the right direction.

We currently expect a recession that is largely due to the effects of pandemic. The labour market was really healthy”, Scheele said.