[nicbou]

Looking around me in Germany, I would say that we're out of the gutter at best.

My relocation consultant friends said that hiring has picked up again after their slowest year in business.

At some point it felt as if half of my friends were unemployed. Some of them had their 12 months of unemployment insurance run out, or their 6-month residence permit extension after losing their job. Now a few of them found jobs, but it took them a while and interviewing was far more difficult than before.

This is just anecdata, but it feels like if something recovered from the bottom, it was in the last two months at best.