FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) Germany's unemployment rate eased in September to 6.6 percent from 6.8 percent in August as the job market picked up as the summer came to an end.
The seasonally unadjusted figures Tuesday from the country's labor agency showed that 2.85 million people were out of work, down 97,000 from the previous month.
The rate remained higher at 9.6 percent in former communist East Germany, which has lagged the west since reunification in 1990 at the end of the Cold War.
Germany's jobless rate was only 5.0 percent under the International Labor Organization's yardstick, which counts fewer people as jobless. Many areas of the country are at or near essentially full employment due to strong manufacturing exports.
