short-time working measures, to the early consequences of anticrisis programs and to the will of the social partners to maintain employment for as long as possible, Germany hasn’t yet experienced an unemployment boom, even though industrial employment is starting to weather out (-2.3%). However, in spite of economic indexes referring to a slow improvement of the situation, orders and prospects for key sectors such as machine-tool, metal or electrical engineering are so bad that professionals don’t see how they can avoid “adjusting wage contributions to the reality of production.” In these sectors, there should be 80,000 layoffs.
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