Not all is well in Euroland.
German unemployment rose for the ninth month in October, keeping the jobless rate at a five-year high of 10.7 percent, as companies including General Motors Corp. announced plans to fire thousands of workers. The number of jobseekers in Europe's largest economy rose a seasonally adjusted 12,000 to 4.46 million, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said. Economists expected an increase of 15,000, the median of 41 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey showed. The increase in German unemployment underlines the divergence between the economy of the 12 nations sharing the euro and the U.S. and U.K. The U.S. jobless rate probably held at 5.4 percent in October as 175,000 jobs were created, a Bloomberg survey of 68 economists showed. The Labor Department releases the report on Friday. The U.K. unemployment rate held at a 29-year low of 2.7 percent in September. |