Unemployment remains at a record high of 10% on average across the Eurozone according to the latest figures released by the European statistics agency Eurostat.

 

16 million people are now unemployed in the 16 countries that use the Euro, though the distribution of joblessness is increasingly uneven. Austria and the Netherlands register the lowest rates of unemployment, at 3.8% (July) and 4.4% (June) respectively. Germany’s rate has fallen from 7.6% to 6.9% since last year while Spain’s remains extraordinarily high at 20.3% (July; all figures seasonally adjusted). Meanwhile, Ireland’s rate continues to climb, from 12.3% last year to 13.6% now.

 

The growing divergence in sovereign borrowing costs between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ countries has been well documented in recent weeks. An increasing variance of employment levels can only feed into and reinforce this and other Eurozone imbalances including, crucially, those of international competitiveness and GDP growth expectations. This is bad news for everyone in the weaker European economies but especially so for unemployed young people (43.6% of Spanish people aged 15-24 are jobless, as are 29.1% of Irish) who are left with little choice other than retraining for uncertain job prospects in the new/smart/green economy, waiting around for the economy to pick up, or emigrating. In this context, Irish fears of once again losing a generation are well-founded.