E. German Jobless Rate Soared 25% as Regime Waned

BONN — East German unemployment shot up by 25% in September, the last month before the country’s battered and inefficient economy was absorbed into a unified Germany, official statistics showed today.

Meanwhile, the number of jobless in what was West Germany fell to 1.73 million from 1.81 million in August, as companies hired more people to cope with the extra demand for products from the East, the Federal Labor Office in Nuremberg said.

Unemployment in the East, which had been officially non-existent under Communist rule, jumped to nearly 450,000 in September.

Labor Office President Heinrich Francke said that the move from a planned to a market economy in eastern Germany meant job losses would initially exceed the creation of new jobs. “This painful process is unavoidable in view of the often low productivity of the traditional jobs and the enormous shortcomings in the range and quality of (East German) products under competitive conditions,” he said.