Public spending cuts and collapsing business confidence have sent unemployment in the eurozone to a record 16 million people, up 587,000 on the same month in 2010.
Official figures compiled by Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency, show the heavy toll taken on the workforce by austerity measures and the slowdown in the eurozone economy during 2011.
Unemployment across the 17-member single currency area hit 16.4 million as of November 2011. The unemployment rate – the proportion of the workforce without a job – has risen only slightly over the past 12 months, to 10.3%; but many workers have given up on finding a job.
In bailed-out Greece, the unemployment rate in November stood at 18.8%, up from 13.3% in November 2010; while Spain had the highest unemployment rate in Europe, at 22.9%. In Germany, however, still the motor of the European economy, and as yet relatively unscathed by the downturn, the rate declined, from 6.7% in November 2010 to 5.5% a year later.
The sharp divide between the strongest members of the eurozone and its recession-hit periphery underlines the tough challenge facing politicians in finding a solution to the crisis that all their voters are willing to accept.
Young workers have been hit disproportionately hard by the deterioration in the labour market, the figures reveal, with youth unemployment rates much higher than those for the workforce as a whole. In Spain, 49.6% of under-25s were without a job; in Greece, it was 46.6%.
Rising unemployment was not confined to the single currency area, however: Eurostat calculates that 23.7 million people were out of work across the EU as a whole in November, an increase of 723,000.
Separate figures also released by Eurostat on Friday showed that retail sales declined by 0.8% in the eurozone – and 0.6% in the wider EU – in November, compared with a month earlier, suggesting that consumers are starting to tighten their belts as confidence is undermined by the continuing political turmoil.
EU leaders will hold a series of meetings in the coming weeks in a bid to strike a deal to underpin the single currency and prevent strains in financial markets becoming a full-blown credit crunch.
• This article was amended on 10 January 2012 to correct Germany's November unemployment figures for 2010 and 2011. These were given as 9.1% and 8.1%. But this was the rate Eurostat gave for people aged under 25, not the whole population.
Comments
6 January 2012 11:14AM
Get rid of red tape and free up the labour markets!
6 January 2012 11:15AM
The technocrat economists believe this is a price worth paying.
To me it looks like the lingering death throes of the free market, unregulated, western capitalist project.
6 January 2012 11:30AM
thats bcos the technocrat economists have £50k a year jobs working for some bailed out economic institution.
they're unable to see beyond their spectacled view of their own offices...
they'll be first to hang when anarchy comes a knockin'
6 January 2012 11:40AM
Isn't it great how newspapers can publish this stuff to divert our attention away from the bad state of the British economy and the British pound?
6 January 2012 11:41AM
This is what happens when you get 30 years+ of Socialism.
6 January 2012 11:45AM
Ah, yes, the old belief that everything to the right of Ronald Reagan is a socialist...
I guess you said more about your education than about Europe.
6 January 2012 11:45AM
Every unemployed oerson represents the futile price of pursuing policies which protect the rich and nobody else. None of us can cause a revolution alone, and, in any event, perhaps a violent revolt would only serve to give the rich even more muscle with which to strangle the innocent and vulnerable. Perhaps we should consider what possible effect 15 million people may have in a united effort to stop the wheels of commerce turning for long enough to provoke talks at a serious level with our so called political representatives. It would bring real meaning to "we are all in this together".
6 January 2012 11:46AM
Are you seriously saying that we have had 30+ years of Socialism in UK/Europe? You need to look up the definition of Socialism. And while you are at it look up Revisionism.
6 January 2012 11:46AM
What create sweat shops?
6 January 2012 11:52AM
I think it's quite interesting how high unemployment and public debt levels seem to be going hand in hand across Europe.
Does this link expand to the proportion of GDP spent on the public sector as well?
Also what proportion of GDP is manufacturing based in these countries compared to Germany for example?
I feel that this must endorse Cameron's stance last month as well as getting caught up in this mess is the last thing we need as a country at the moment; after all we have enough of our own problems to deal with....
6 January 2012 11:57AM
Surely, all this unemployment represents a huge opportunity - if these people worked, they would create both demand (as consumers) and supply (as workers) and tax (as taxpayers) - so there's something broken in the money supply and availability of capital such that they can't be put to work. I imagine that has something to do with the fear in the debt markets scrambling to maintain asset price bubbles (e.g. house prices) from collapsing and prioritising that over new ventures that would employ the unemployed; and in the public sector its the unwillingness to spend borrowed money because the interest charged is too high (as a result of the same self-reinforcing fear). But I think this is all putting the cart before the horse - employment should not simply occur as a "nice-to-have-but-not-essential" by-product of the activity of capital, it ought rather to be its central aim, capital accumulation should be a by-product of the employment of labour, and if the eurozone wants to succeed it needs to recognise the role of capital is secondary and derivative (it is after all, only money, which the monetary authorities can freely print.)
6 January 2012 11:58AM
Nah just ask George Osborne. Those lazy, ambitionless ne'er-do-wells are to blame for trashing employment prospects ever since the 1980s, and all because they wanted to live on £30 a week
6 January 2012 12:01PM
thank god we never converted to the Euro !
6 January 2012 12:01PM
And the way back for them isn't looking available, either.
This is what happens when you borrow a lot of money every year, then try to treat your creditors like they're idiots. They simply aren't, and if you rely on borrowing every year, you throw away your leverage and become slave to the creditors.
Not once has the Eurozone come close to admitting its faults. Not once has it said monetary union of this format has been a mistake. Not once have they wavered from the silly belief that things will work themselves out, without anyone taking any pain.
What did they produce? A new treaty, which outlines no new rules, but basically says that they're going to start enforcing the ones that have been in place for a decade.
If you were in charge of a lot of money, would you lend to these people? I know I wouldn't.
6 January 2012 12:02PM
Oh yes, of course. Let's just look out for ourselves as usual.
After all, that's the ethos behind our unregulated capitalist system isn't it? Not just sefishness but greed as well. Cameron does a good line in both.
And don't give me any of that "You must be a socialist then" BS please, I didn't vote for capitalism or socialism, they were here already when I was born
6 January 2012 12:09PM
Is that a photograph of all the Spaniards with jobs?
6 January 2012 12:11PM
Scary how close we came though! It was only the fact that Gordon wanted to piss off Tony...
6 January 2012 12:12PM
wow! plenty of cannon fodder for the coming war!
6 January 2012 12:13PM
Yes, who can forget the glorious events of 1989 when the oppressed people of the West rose up, overthrew capitalism and instituted Socialism?
Hang on...
6 January 2012 12:15PM
Who are 'the creditors' TheGambler? And where did they get so much money to lend?
6 January 2012 12:16PM
Answer these 2 questions:
public spending in UK/Europe vs. GDP is bigger or smaller than 30 years ago?
Answer: it's bigger, which is the recognizable sign of socialism.
6 January 2012 12:16PM
True. And who believes that if we pull through this mess, and start to pick up again, that any one of them will then continue to stick to these rules?
6 January 2012 12:18PM
So unemployment is high in the rest of Europe. Is that akl Thatcher's fault too?
6 January 2012 12:19PM
This is highly reminiscent of the 1930s... high unemployment but rising inequality, nationalism increasing, leaders not knowing what to do (well, that's not just in the 1930s, its pretty much all the time), blaming immigrants for everything, nutters gaining power (Front national, radical right in Italy, Greece, Austria...), radical left coming back... I'm surprised that there's only been one lunatic mass killing (the Norwegian case) so far.
So much for learning from history. History repeats itself, when you don't actually study it.
6 January 2012 12:32PM
Yep, as soon as they got their confidence in the Eurozone experiment back again, they'd be up to the same old games of bribing the electorate.
The ironic thing I find is that these rules wouldn't even have prevented Portugal or Ireland requiring bailouts. How can anyone be so stupid as to come up with the same rules as 10 years ago, call them a bazooka to solve the crisis, yet they wouldn't have even *prevented* it in the first place?
Then we get all the criticism for saying no...beggars belief.
6 January 2012 12:34PM
Wherever you look you see grim-faced political leaders hacking away at, or fully abandoning, projects that stimulate employment, that have at their heart the idea that an educated workforce given something to occupy their hands and brains is a positive benefit to the country - even the world. Research is curling up and dying on the branch even in the face of sustained acceptance that renewable, light and resource-cheap technologies may help us address a thousand problems far worse than debt that we are leaving to the generations to come. It's a sort of slow, ultimately ruinous pan-national suicide. Unemployed generations mope, moan and loiter and day after day, and the human capital rots and accumulates like silt clogging up an estuary.
And yet the politicians justify their acts with one and single voice - they must do what they do because of the markets. Unemployment is seen as the necessary price to pay, but it will be a price that, surely, the markets themselves will end up paying as our depleting wealth will leak away from Wall Street too, eventually.
6 January 2012 12:36PM
Creditors are many people. They got their money through standard business operations, or in the case of other states, reserves and taxation.
None of which is relevant. It's like asking the drug dealer where he gets the drugs from - doesn't matter; you're hooked and you need whatever he's got.
This is where we are, which is why all the posturing and objection from the left is simply a childish refusal to accept that the country will never have a free set of options to choose from until there is a zero deficit.
6 January 2012 12:37PM
And with unfaillible Human logic we continue developping technologies that require less and less labour, and we refuse to consider a maximum limit of two children per Human monkey!
Hey ho instead of having used contraception we're going to use weapons soon. Hope the various Popes roast in hell.
6 January 2012 12:37PM
"So unemployment is high in the rest of Europe. Is that akl Thatcher's fault too?"
In Europe's largest country - unemployment is at the lowest level for 19 years
and there are serious labour shortages in many areas.
(Vacancies for 76,000 qualified engineers for example).
6 January 2012 12:37PM
I'm not saying anything about your political beliefs.
But in response to your reply I just think we have to focus on getting our own house in order at the moment.
I've nothing against the EU but think the Euro is broken beyond repair and the thought of us having to put more money into supporting it does not sit well with me; particularly as any previous support seems to be having little or no effect in curing the problems.
When I talk about looking after ourselves I talk about the country as a whole, not any particular individual so am not in any way advocating greed or selfishness....
6 January 2012 12:38PM
That's one country out of how many?
6 January 2012 12:42PM
The papers today are reporting that the US and UK are in much better than thought state compared to the eurozone and the pound is at a15 month high against the euro... is that that just too positive for you? can you only cope with bad news?
6 January 2012 12:43PM
I suppose Liam Byrne and New Labour think it's down to welfare dependency.
6 January 2012 12:46PM
@charneguito
Odd, that. When I was studying politics and economics, socialism involved public ownership of the means of production. Is this a case of 'words mean what I want them to mean', as in the the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland? A social welfare system (i.e. one that tries to avoid those made redundant having to live in tent cities, as in the US currently) is not socialism.
6 January 2012 12:51PM
You are right.
In the Tory UK public debt as a percentage of GDP was 44.4% in 1981 and 44.1% in 2009 after the banking crisis lifted it up to 36.2% the year before.
Whereas in the Socailaist USA it has gone up from 32% to 70% of GDP.
That's socialism for you.
6 January 2012 12:52PM
So all banks must be socialist institutions then, right?
I mean, the are leveraged 30-40 times to what they hold in capital - money borrowed from other banks and financial institutions?
So, either banks are 'socialist' institutions then. Or you haven't got a fucking clue what you're talking about.
I am convinced it's the latter.
6 January 2012 12:56PM
That's very bad news indeed for all those who took the advice of expert Cifers a couple of years ago and put all their money in Euros when you could get only 1.05 euros to the pound..
6 January 2012 1:00PM
Of course they were.
They lent to people with no hope of paying the money back knowing the taxpayer would bail them out when AIG couldn't.
That's the popular concept of socialism I understand.
6 January 2012 1:02PM
We seem to be faced with a re-run of the Great Depression where Capitalism and Cuts are no answer to the problems facing us. Will we need World War III to sort out the problems of unregulated Capitalism?
6 January 2012 1:03PM
Well I've just had lunch and I'm now going to show my solidarity with the euromed countries and have a siesta.
6 January 2012 1:06PM
Higher tax rates and higher public spending *are* the processes by which private money is moved into the collective, public hands.
Failure to provide for people does not imply socialism never happened. Have you noticed that most countries which espouse socialist or even communist views, tend to become very authoritarian?
This isn't socialism; it's based on democracy, but you can't deny the clear pattern. It's the elephant in the room for the Left - socialism in practice doesn't seem to come about the way the theory dictates.
This is precisely what happened with capitalism. Adam Smith argued for capitalism on the basis that free markets without any distortions would improve welfare for *everyone*. His equations were all fine, until the 20th C, when declining terms of trade were discovered.
The point is, capitalism was a lovely theory about freedom and increasing everyone's welfare - didn't work out that way; we got an increasing gap of wealth.
Do you honestly think socialism is much different? The practice will never match the theory, just like with capitalism.
However, just because aspects haven't worked out how we'd all like, doesn't mean you can simply claim there hasn't been a clear shift to the Left in terms of public expenditure and tax rates, any more than someone on the Right can claim capitalism has never happened because there are still some distortions in markets.
The answer will always be one of the infinite points inbetween the extreme right, and extreme left. I do wish people would get on board with this, and try to converge on which of those points is the right one. At the moment, we're back to the same old silly side-taking politico-economics of old; you're either one, or the other.
(For the sake of it, I don't believe socialism is the answer to anything, because it fails to account for the selfish nature of humans, and the resulting Free Rider problem. People cannot work together on a society-wide scale, whilst still holding diverse enough views to govern themselves efficiently)
6 January 2012 1:13PM
Yes, in a perverse way that's true.
Yet I think that's not what our friend charnegito meant.
In his case repeating dumb slogans sometimes has to make do if you haven't got the knowledge, apparently.
6 January 2012 1:25PM
Both your obsevations seem spot on to me.
Personally I like dumb slogans. They are so easy to turn around.
6 January 2012 1:42PM
Or in the UK how about just abolishing Employers NI - a tax on employment - which means that it costs an employer £29,000 to pay an employee £27,000.
Remove that and workers become cheaper to employ without the workers themselves losing a penny.
A company can employ 12 people on £25k for the curent cost of employing 11 on £25k.
The Govt loses £22k in tax revenue from the employment of the 11 - but gains £6k straight back in tax revenue from the 12th - and another £6k from the benefit no longer paid to the 12th employee.
6 January 2012 1:49PM
Get rid of EU and free up the labour markets!
6 January 2012 1:54PM
A factor that has not been mentioned is demographics. While the structure of its economy has a role in the performance of germany, it is also reaping the benefits of a fertility rate that has been around 1,3-1,5 for some decades now. This spells great job prospects for every german(-speaker) with a decent education. To think that the prosperity and strength of a country lies in a large population is just an antiquated way of reasoning.
6 January 2012 1:56PM
An excellent post, I can't believe it hasn't gotten more recommends
This is interesting, indeed some "socialist" countries have worse social provision than the UK does. For example China (although it is indeed more classically socialist in the sense of Government involvement in the economy)
I agree though that Communism (full Socialism) is as ridiculous as fully Free Markets/Anarchism. The best form seems to be somewhere on the continuum - not saying we have it right but it must be close to the liberal-socialist-capitalist-democracy we have.
6 January 2012 1:57PM
??
A big part of what the EU is about is free labour markets. You make no sense
6 January 2012 1:57PM
It can also employ the same 11 people it needs to meet demand for its products and services and put £25k towards a new Ferrari for the owner.
The government loses £25k in tax revenues and therefore needs to put another person out of wrok. A spiral of decline.
(I can't be bothered correcting your maths but you will get the idea).
6 January 2012 2:00PM
The creditors run fractional reserve banking and create the non existent money they lend (screen digits) mainly out of over leveraged thin air. Hence the debtors owe the creditors non existent money plus interest.
This might be a problem...