Central Europe
Central Europe WEST GERMANY HE WEST GERMAN ECONOMY continued to expand between July 1955 and TJune 1956. After June, production declined slightly. The gross national product rose 11 per cent in 1955, to 60 per cent above 1950. Industrial pro- duction, up 16 per cent, doubled that of 1950. The index (1936= 100) was 221 by June 1956. But West Berlin only regained the 1936 level. Employment in the Federal Republic was more than 800,000 above the previous year. In part, this was due to the influx of almost 300,000 refugees from East Germany during 1955-56. Unemployment, at 479,000, or 2.5 per cent of the labor force of 18.4 million, was the lowest since the end of World War II. West Berlin unemployment fell, but was still 11.3 per cent. Output per man was up 17 per cent in 1955, while wages rose only 12 per cent. The July 1956 cost of living index (1950 = 100) at 113, was 2.3 per cent above July 1955. National consumption rose 12 per cent during 1955-56, but old age pensioners, war invalids and widows, and the lowest categories of un- skilled workers, were barely touched by the "economic miracle," and contin- ued to exist near the subsistence level. Steel production, exceeding that of either France or Britain, reached a post- war high of 21,700,000 tons in the twelve months under review. Some of the Ruhr steel and coal combines, split up by the Allies to destroy "dangerous concentrations of economic power," recombined in new forms.
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