BERLIN, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- Germany's unemployment rate in September only fell slightly by 0.1 percentage points to 5.7 percent, the Federal Employment Agency (BA) said on Friday.

Although the number of jobless people in Europe's largest economy dropped by 69,000 from the previous month, it was still 141,000 higher than a year ago at more than 2.6 million, showed the figures.

"The beginning of the autumn revival is comparatively small this year," Daniel Terzenbach, a BA board member, said in a statement.

After months of stagnation, the number of people in employment in Germany remained virtually unchanged at 45.8 million in August, according to preliminary figures released on Friday by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).

The Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and some other leading economic institutes in the country on Thursday significantly lowered their forecast for the German economy, projecting a recession of 0.6 percent and a "moderate increase" in unemployment in 2023.

"The downturn has reached the labor market," the institutes' autumn forecast said. Unemployment figures would rise even stronger if not for "the notorious shortage of personnel in many sectors, which will continue to worsen in the future."

According to the Institute for Employment Research, Germany's economy could lack as many as seven million skilled workers by 2035 unless sufficient countermeasures were taken, such as increasing the employment of older people, women and labor migration.

To attract workers from outside the European Union, Germany has passed a new law this year that makes it easier to obtain a residence permit. "Securing our skilled labor base is one of Germany's greatest economic tasks for the coming decades," Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil said. Enditem

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