The prospects are good that average unemployment will fall back below 2.9m in 2014 (2013: 2.950m., 2012: 2.897m). This requires ongoing healthy job growth but, given the acceleration in the economy now under way, this is on the cards. In the course of the fourth quarter 2013 job gains already started to pick up. At the end of December the number of people in work was 84,000 up on three months earlier. It remains encouraging that the number of jobs subject to social insurance contributions is seeing above-average growth. Here the increase on a year earlier was 1.1%, while overall employment was up by only 0.6%. The number of people employed exclusively in the low-wage sector is declining slightly. This contradicts the theory sometimes heard that the German job miracle is based largely on precarious employment. The strongest increase in employment is still in commercial services (without temporary work) and in the health and social sector. We expect the average number of people in work in Germany to rise by almost 300,000 in 2014.