German unemployment is seen falling in seasonally adjusted terms for a fourth consecutive month in December, although labour market reforms rather than the fragile economic recovery will be behind the decline.
According to a Reuters survey of 15 economists, the adjusted jobless total should fall by 10,000 from the 4.363 million reported in November. Forecasts ranged from a drop of 20,000 to a rise of 5,000.
The slight dip is likely to be the result of reforms, including those persuading the jobless to become self-employed and those designed to remove some categories of jobless, such as older workers, from the statistics.
"Typically we might have expected the adjusted total to rise by 10,000 to 20,000, so there's a marginal effect from the reforms and from efforts to remove people from the statistics," said Mr Carsten Demski, an economist at Bankgesellschaft Berlin. "But we can't expect any real job creation until the middle of the year," he added.
The Federal Labour Office is set to release official figures on Thursday.