BERLIN, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Eastern German labor costs are still substantially lower than those in the western part of the country more than 27 years after reunification, official figures published on Tuesday by the Federal Statistical Office show.

According to the Wiesbaden-based government agency, the average cost of an hour of work in east Germany (excluding Berlin) was 26.14 euros in 2016 compared to 34.19 in the western part of the country. The nation-wide average was measured by the Federal Statistical Office at 33.09 euros (38.75 U.S. dollars), a circumstance which reflected west Germany's larger share of the country's total population and industries.

The biggest labor cost gap, 36.4 percent, was recorded in the manufacturing industry. Although the sectoral differential narrowed significantly between 1992 and 1996 from 53.4 percent to 42.7 percent, the catch-up process recorded in the immediate aftermath of reunification has since slowed again.

The smallest East-West difference in labor costs was measured in the public administration, defense and social insurance sector (4.5 percent), followed by the education sector where the gap was 6.8 percent.

In both east and west Germany, the labor costs of large companies (more than 1,000 employees) were nearly twice as high as those of small companies (between 10 and 49 employees). However, nearly a third of western German staff (36 percent) were employed in large companies while the comparative figure as only 15 percent in the east.