P.M. BRIEFING : East German Employment Dips

BONN —  Unemployment in former East Germany jumped to 8.6% in January, reflecting the region’s deepening slump and widening the gap with the booming west, officials and economists said today.

The number of people out of work in the former Communist country rose to 757,162 from 642,182 in December. At the same time, the number of eastern Germans on short-time work--a state-funded limbo between employment and joblessness--also jumped unexpectedly by 70,000 to 1.86million.

Unemployment in what was West Germany rose to 1.87 million people from 1.78 million in December, officials said, but this was well below the 2.19 million jobless in January, 1990. “In western Germany, employment is still expanding soundly. It is declining further in eastern Germany,” Federal Labor Office President Heinrich Franke said.