The coronavirus crisis prompted German firms to seek government-backed shorter hours schemes for a total of 11.7 million workers since March, official data showed Wednesday. Meanwhile the unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent in May, the equivalent of some 2.8 million people, from 5.8 percent in April, the BA federal labour agency said. Before the coronavirus outbreak, German unemployment had held steady at around 5.0 percent for a long time. tgb/hmn/bmm