Germany's jobs market is robust, with a record number of people in work and labour exchanges listing a high number of vacancies, official data showed Monday, one day before the tally of those out of work is set to be released. Federal statisticians in Wiesbaden said 41.04 million people wereeither in employment or self-employed out of a population of about 80million, up 1.3 per cent from the previous year. The rest are children, retired, jobless or not seeking work. The Federal Labour Office in Nuremberg said its index of vacant jobs rose in December to 180, up 24 points from a year earlier. Both numbers reflect the strong growth in the past year in Germany's economy and its imperviousness to the recession sweeping through parts of the eurozone in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis. The Labour Office is to publish the December unemployment tally on Tuesday, with economists at major banks predicting that it will be lower than November's by 10,000 to 20,000 in seasonally adjusted terms, around the level of 2.8 million.
