ABSTRACT
Brazil, China, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan also joined in as stiff competitors to West German traditional trading rivals from Western Europe and the United States. Many markets for the traditional West German exports of food, steel, and coal were no longer importing by the 1970s. West Germany had to spend too much money on production costs in the 1970s and 1980s and had nothing left for investment. Technical innovations of the 1970s, particularly in the widespread use of microprocessors, enabled West German industrialists to replace part of their expensive work force with energy-efficient, labor-barren machines. West Germany to date remains one of the only Western economies to have less than one-half of its labor force concentrated in the service sector. The West German government should take a much stronger role in encouraging growth for there to be any positive impact on unemployment. In 1981, unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany reached 5.5 percent, the highest level since 1954.
