{"id":444443,"date":"2026-01-31T04:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444443\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T04:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T04:34:13","slug":"german-economy-grew-in-latest-quarter-but-challenges-remain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/444443\/","title":{"rendered":"German economy grew in latest quarter, but challenges remain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Germany’s\u00a0<\/a>economy grew more than expected in the fourth quarter of 2025, according\u00a0to official figures released on Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

German gross domestic product\u00a0was up 0.3%, beating the consensus forecast growth of 0.2%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But increases in inflation and unemployment underscored the challenges that confront Europe’s largest economy.<\/p>\n

German inflation rises slightly in January<\/p>\n

Inflation\u00a0edged up\u00a0slightly in January, returning above the European Central Bank’s 2% target to 2.1% year-on-year.<\/p>\n

Inflation was particularly high in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW)<\/a>, Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg<\/a>, Bavaria<\/a>, Saxony<\/a> and Lower Saxony<\/a>, reaching as high as 2.3% in some regions.<\/p>\n

Services were the biggest driver of inflation, rising 3.2% off the back of higher public transport prices.<\/p>\n

Food prices rose by 2.1%, well up from the 0.8% increase seen in December, with fruit and vegetables, coffee, and meat all costing significantly more.<\/p>\n

There was some relief in energy prices, however, which were 1.7% cheaper in January than a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Number of Germans unemployed pushes past 3 million mark\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unemployment\u00a0also increased by 177,000 to 3.08\u00a0million in January, with the rate having jumped by\u00a00.4 percentage points \u200cto\u00a06.6% in seasonally \u2060unadjusted terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to monthly statistics released by the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur f\u00fcr Arbeit, or BA), 92,000 more people were unemployed in January 2026 than at the same time last year.<\/p>\n

“The rise in the \u2060number of unemployed to more than three million is an alarm signal,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz<\/a> wrote on social media.\u00a0“The economic upturn must be this year’s central priority.”<\/p>\n

But BA chairwoman Andrea Nahles said there was “currently little dynamism in the labor market,” writing that an increase in unemployment is common at this time of year. “Unemployment has increased for the usual start-of-year reasons, pushing us over the three-million mark,” she said.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0August 2025<\/a>,\u00a0Germany’s unemployment figures nudged above the three-million mark for the first time in more than ten years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany’s\u00a0economy grew more than expected in the fourth quarter of 2025, according\u00a0to official figures released on Friday.\u00a0 German…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-444443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}