Employment in Germany rose by 1.3% in the third quarter compared to the same quarter last year according to figures from the Institute for Labour Market and Professional Research (IAB).

Employment also reached a new record level with more than 45 million people employed in the third quarter.

At the same time, in Q3 2018, the working population in Germany worked a total of 15.64 billion hours. That is 1.4% more than in the same period last year. This is the highest figure recorded since the start of the all-German IAB working hours account in 1991.

However, the IAB reported that labour productivity decreased by 0.4% compared to the third quarter of 2017. 

The average working time per employed person in the third quarter of 2018 was 347.4 hours. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, it increased by 0.2%.

Meanwhile, the number of full-time employees increased by 1.7% and the number of part-time employees by 1.4%.

IAB also found that the number of paid overtime hours of employees per quarter increased by 0.1 to 7.4 hours compared to the same quarter of the previous year.