Luxembourg, 14/01/2000 (Agence Europe) - The EU's statistical office, Eurostat, published on Friday figures showing that the economy as a whole, the total hourly labour costs of the Euro-zone rose 2.2%, in nominal terms in the third quarter of 1999 compared to the same period the previous year. In the second quarter 1999 the increase was a revised 2.0%. for the EU as a whole the rise was 2.7% compared to a revised 2.3% in the previous quarter.
Still in the third quarter 1999, Eurostat notes that:
a) For the countries where data is available (the data for Greece and Portugal are not yet available), Italy registered the lowest annual rate (5.0%) and Denmark (4.0%).
b) In industry, the hourly labour costs rose by 2.2% in the Euro-zone and 2.4% in the EU-15. The weakest increases, according to the data available, were recorded in Sweden and Italy (1.1% each) as well as in Spain (1.8%) and the most significant were in Denmark (3.6%), the United Kingdom (3.4%) and Finland (3.3%).