Berlin, Oct 5 (IANS): Employment in Germany could return to and even exceed the pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels in 2022, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) said in a forecast.

Following the Covi-19 crisis, the number of employees subject to social security contributions in Germany could rise by 550,000 to 34.42 million in 2022, Xinhua news agency quoted the forecast as saying.

"This will set new record highs," said IAB's head of research Enzo Weber in a statement.

"However, employment subject to social security contributions is still well off the growth path that would have been expected without the crisis."

The IAB expects employment to increase in almost all sectors of the German economy. In particular, recovery is expected in the second half of the year in catering and tourism as well as in the transport, cultural, sports and trade fair sectors.

As demand for labour rises in the wake of the economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, bottlenecks in the labour market would once again become more relevant.

"This is currently affecting sectors, such as parts of the hospitality industry, which have lost a lot of employees during the lockdowns and which now need to restock in a short period of time," Weber said.

According to the IAB, the unemployment rate in Germany will decline from the current 5.4 per cent to 5.1 per cent in 2022, a level only slightly higher than in 2019.

The recovery of the country's labour market has already started.

In September, the unemployment rate was 0.8 percentage points below the figure of the same period of last year, according to the Federal Employment Agency (BA).

"It is particularly encouraging that the impact of the pandemic on the labour market is diminishing and that employment is growing significantly," Labour Minister Hubertus Heil said.