Eurostat – Unemployment in the euro area remains high – Frankfurter Rundschau

02 February 2016

line at an employment agency in Madrid. Photo: dpa

The average rate of unemployment in the euro area is decreasing only slowly. In December, it stood at 10.4 percent. The economic recovery is modest.

Unemployment in the euro area remains above ten percent. For December, the European statistics agency Eurostat show an average unemployment rate of 10.4 percent, as it may impart on Tuesday. Thus, the rate fell over the year by one percentage point. It now stands at its lowest level since 2011, but remains high. And the prospects are not good, that the reduction in unemployment could accelerate. For the economic recovery is still too modest.

“The expected increase in employment is progressing too slowly, than that it could lead to a significant reduction in unemployment,” noted the International Labour Organisation in its view 2016. ‘/ p>

Jennifer McKeown, analyst at Capital Economics, said the current unemployment figures are an indication of a subdued recovery, but am this subject, that a global slower economic growth trend could reverse. “We continue to think that the European Central Bank before it has a lot of work,” says McKeown. The central bank keeps the economy for years with a flood cheap money going. Howard Archer of IHS Global expects the unemployment rate could fall by year-end, at least less than ten percent.

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Germany stands out in Europe. After the calculation of Eurostat, the unemployment rate of the Federal Republic even in December was 4.5 percent. Germany thus suppressed as the largest economy in the euro area, the overall European rate down. In crisis states such as Spain and Greece, unemployment remains extremely high. In Spain even almost every fourth person was in December, according to Eurostat figures more than one in five unemployed (20.8 percent), in Greece by Numbers October (24.5 percent). During the year, the situation improved in the labor market in 23 EU countries, in four countries increased the quota, in Estonia it remained unchanged. Overall, the statistics for the euro area recorded currently 16.75 million unemployed people across the European Union, there are nearly 22 million.

The old continent is lagging so in addressing the consequences of the financial crisis United States continues to far behind. While the unemployment rate has now fallen Eurostat to five percent in the US, it is Europe at nine percent, only in the euro area as mentioned in 10.4.

Especially sad is the situation of young people in the euro zone. The unemployment rate for people under 25 years in December was 22 percent, more than twice as high as the general unemployment. Again sting again Spain (48.6 percent) and Greece (46.0) shows, where almost half of young people have no job. Not covered by the statistics, however, are students, so the unemployment rate tends to be biased upwards.

unemployment at the beginning of professional life has long-term consequences. It can lead to lower incomes and poorer qualifications. For Germany, the Institute for Employment Research has just calculated from the 1980 vintages that an additional year of full-time at the beginning of working life brings a salary increase of ten percent later on average.

For the European Central Bank, the high unemployment remains challenging. In order for the economy lacks demand, whereby inflation should tend to remain low, because the companies have no incentive to increase prices. The ECB will continue to try to boost inflation

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