Headline unemployment in Germany fell under the 4m mark in November, underscoring the country’s striking transformation from the “sick man of Europe” to one of the world’s fastest-growing industrial economies.

The Federal Labour Agency said on Thursday that the number of jobseekers had fallen by a seasonally adjusted 86,000 from October, a far steeper drop than economists had anticipated, bringing the total unemployed to 3.96m, or 9.6 per cent of the active population.