ÖHRINGEN, Germany — Öhringen lies deep in automaking country, homeland of Germany’s biggest industry and a source of national pride. And by most appearances, life is pretty good.

The unemployment rate in Öhringen is a mere 2.3 percent. Restaurants, nursing homes and kindergartens are begging for workers. The city government is using bulging tax receipts to build a new secondary school and a hospital.

But just outside Öhringen’s tidy old quarter, dominated by the steeple of a 15th-century stone church, there are signs that the economic upswing that has nourished this idyll is beginning to falter.