Germany and the Euro

West Germany- Economy (1960s)

• The West German economy however did not grow consistently in the 1960s because:
• such a pace could not be sustained,
• the supply of labour from East Germany was cut off by the Berlin Wall, built in 1961,
• the Bundesbank was worried about possible overheating and slowed the pace of growth several times.

• By 1960 industrial production had risen to 2.5 times the level of 1950 and far beyond any that the Nazis had reached during the 1930s in all of Germany.
• GDP rose by 2/3 during the same decade.
• The number of persons employed rose from 13.8 million in 1950 to 19.8 million in 1960, and the unemployment rate fell from 10.3% to 1.2%.