Euro Area Employment

The above shows Eurostat's index for total employment, including the just released estimate for the last quarter of 2011.  Essentially this is just further confirmation of the overall pattern clear in recent European data that, after a very weak and partial recovery from the great recession, Europe is slowly sliding into a second recession.

On an administrative note - apologies for the weak blogging the past week.  I've been on travel and it's been hard to stay up on it.  I'll be returning home tomorrow and hopefully things will start to stabilize.