WSJ:Euro-Zone Employment Falls Again in Second Quarter
The number of people with jobs in the 17 countries that share the euro fell again in the three months to June, as the currency area's economy returned to growth following 18 months of contraction.
The decline in employment, albeit modest, indicates businesses aren't yet confident enough about the sustainability of the pickup in activity to hire, and suggests consumer spending is unlikely to increase significantly in the coming months.
The European Union's official statistics agency said Friday the number of people in work fell 0.1% from the first quarter to stand at 145 million, which is 1% lower than it was in the second quarter of 2012.
A pickup in employment usually lags an increase in production by several months, so the second-quarter decline isn't a surprise, but along with the decline in industrial output recorded at the start of the third quarter, it underlines the fragility of any euro-zone recovery.
James Howat, an economist at Capital Economics, said employment in the euro zone usually starts to rise when year-to-year economic growth reaches 0.6%. In the second quarter, gross domestic product was 0.5% down on the same period a year earlier.
"We doubt that the labor market is on the cusp of a strong recovery," Mr. Howat said. "With the labor market likely to remain fragile for some time yet, growth in wages and consumption will remain subdued, while political and social tensions related to high levels of unemployment will persist."
There were encouraging developments in the three countries that have long been at the forefront of the euro zone's fiscal and banking crisis, and which have received bailouts form the currency area and the International Monetary Fund. Employment rose by 0.8% in Portugal, 0.5% in Ireland and 0.1% in Greece, suggesting the three may be on the mend.
However, employment fell sharply in Cyprus, the most recent member to require a bailout as it confronts its banking crisis, and was also down in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia.
In the 27 countries that then made up the EU, employment stabilized in the second quarter, the first three-month period in which the number of people in work didn't fall since the second quarter of 2012. That was largely due to a 0.2% rise in employment in both the U.K. and Sweden, the two largest economies to have remained outside the euro zone.
