15th January 1933
News in Brief - Unemployment

Official unemployment figures released

The officially registered unemployed in Germany on January 15th, 1933, amounted to 5,966,000 persons. At the same time that this figure was given out by the government, it was added that for the first time the curves of unemployment for 1932 and for 1933 had come together. This was officially interpreted to mean that unemployment had ceased to increase. It had been previously shown by the Institut für Konjunkturforschung, however, that the actual number of unemployed was some one and a half million to two million more than that number of registered unemployed. Since the number of the unregistered unemployed had substantially increased during the year 1932 it was somewhat optimistic to conclude definitely that unemployment had ceased to increased, as the National Socialist Angriff did not fail to point out in its issue of January twenty-fifth. It is interesting to note, however, that just as soon as a National Socialist régime was in power, the National Socialist Press began the same optimistic interpretation of unemployment statistics.

Source: Hoover, 1933, p.13

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