Brussels, 25/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - The number of posts available within the EU has never been this low since the beginning of the crisis in 2008. In the space of just five years, 2.8% of jobs have vanished into thin air in the eurozone and above all in the southern countries of Europe, it is stated in the latest edition of the EU Employment and Social Situation Quarterly Review published by the European Commission on Tuesday 25 June. The review underlines that some of the objectives of the EUROPE 2020 strategy will be difficult to attain.
Despite all that has been done to counter it, the EU's GDP continues to contract. It fell by 0.1% during the first quarter 2013, which corresponds to the fifth contraction in six quarters. According to the review, this is “driven by declining investment and exports, while economic activity over the past year fell, mainly due to declining investment and private consumption”.
Not all sectors are affected to the same degree. Since 2008, the largest fall, nearly 20%, was in construction, whereas industry (-9.6%) and trade (-2.2%) are doing hardly better. The countries that have suffered the most recently are Spain, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. It would seem more and more unlikely that the employment objectives under the EUROPE 2020 strategy can be attained for these countries. Taken as a whole, all European unemployment indicators have reached historic levels: general rate of unemployment (12.2% in the eurozone), long-term unemployment (4.6% of Europeans of working age); youth unemployment (nearly 25% in the eurozone); and long-term youth unemployment (7.7% in the EU).
The Commission's review, which was published the day before the European Council which is to focus on youth unemployment, also makes suggestions. Thus, the youth guarantee systems, which are already in place in some member states, are praised for their effectiveness and provide evidence, as the review puts it, that the “role the temporary contracts are playing on the labour market could be crucial for the transition probabilities of young people towards more secure employment”. Intra-European mobility is also a phenomenon that is gaining in magnitude but its impact on the EU labour markets remains very feeble. Finally, the EU's will to increase competitiveness by labour costs has not really borne fruit and labour productivity contracted in 2013 except in Spain and Slovenia. (JK/transl.jl)