The number of unemployed people in Germany went up by 0.4 percent to a total of 2,406,000 at the beginning of 2019, the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced on Thursday.

In January 2019, about 5.3 percent of Germans were unemployed, marking an increase of 196,000 compared to last month. Despite this increase, there are still 165,000 less unemployed people in Germany than in January 2018.

Detlef Scheele, chairman of the German employment agency (BA) spoke of a "usual increase" in unemployment in January, during the presentation of the official employment figures.

The recent increase in unemployment was expected but "only based on seasonal reasons", Holger Schaefer, senior economist for employment and unemployment at the German Economic Institute (IW), told Xinhua on Thursday.

According to calculations by the employment agency, the seasonally adjusted decline in the German workforce had only been 2,000 in January.

Germany's Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced Thursday that the total number of people in employment in December 2018 had increase by 1.1 percent to just above 45 million compared to the year before.

"There are, however, an increasing number of indications that the dynamics of employment growth and unemployment reduction could be slightly less pronounced this year than last year," warned Schaefer.

This January 758,000 vacant jobs were registered at the German employment agency while a total of 825,000 people in Germany received unemployment benefits, 9,000 less than last year, according to BA.

There would still be "no sign of a crisis on the labor market", said IW economist Schaefer.