Eurostat today released the December unemployment rate estimates (graph above). December is unchanged over November. It's hard to read too much into any one month but I think this qualifies as good news: one might have feared that the damage to the real economy was going to accelerate, but instead it's slow and halting.
Still - unemployment is now higher in Europe than it was at the height of the recession following the 2008 financial crisis. It remains a bad situation that still seems likely to get worse before it gets better.
The ECB's monetary developments for December are quite awful and point to negative loan growth in the Eurozone and problems in the repo markets:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ecb.int/press/pdf/md/md1112.pdf
Unemployment in the under-25 group in Spain is roughly 50%. It's almost 24% in France and is 30% in Italy. To engender support for the political system, Howard Laski once said, people have to feel that it provides them with enough benefits to make its preservation worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteEconomics and business aside, the rate of youth unemployment in Europe is a threat to political stability and a challenge for governments to address in the face of austerity measures.