THE 2.5 per cent real growth in German gross domestic product anticipated for this year will be too low to create jobs, officials of Germany's six major economic research institutes say today in an article published by Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. DIW institute official Mr Heiner Flassbeck said: "Lasting growth of 3 to 4 per cent a year for several years would be needed to bring a change on the labour market".

IW Institute president Mr Horst Siebert said wage increases must be no more than productivity gains to create jobs. He said indexing salaries on the inflation rate would make it possible to create around 300,000 jobs a year, and Germany would need four years of zero wage increases in real terms to create 1.2 million jobs. The government has set a goal of reducing Germany's unemployment by half by the year 2000. There were almost 4 million unemployed workers in November.