With unemployment skyrocketing in all but few countries of the European Union, the Commission found that the timing is right to facilitate the internal mobility of labour in the Union, in a clear cut attempt to exploit the EU’s unemployed of the south and the east and squeeze the wage levels in the north and […]Commission facilitates the activities of ‘merchants of labour’
December 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
With unemployment skyrocketing in all but few countries of the European Union, the Commission found that the timing is right to facilitate the internal mobility of labour in the Union, in a clear cut attempt to exploit the EU’s unemployed of the south and the east and squeeze the wage levels in the north and […]Commission: Gifts of €6 billion and free trainees to ‘help’ poor employers
December 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This newspaper feels fully vindicated after yesterday’s announcement issued by the European Commission, stating that the EU’s executive arm is proposing a Council recommendation which will institutionalise a Quality Framework for Traineeships. This was a badly needed decision in view of the upcoming application of the widely advertised €6 billion Youth Guarantee scheme, which promises […]SMEs and micro firms sinking together with south Eurozone
December 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Only 0.2% of the non-financial companies are large (more than 249 employees), the rest are either micro firms (up to 10 employees, 92.5%) or small and medium enterprises (10 to 249 employees, 7.3%). Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, regularly publishes data on enterprises broken down by size classes, which provide information on […]Is Eurozone heading towards a long stagnation?
November 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
“The euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 12.1% in October 2013, down from 12.2% in September”. These are the first two lines of a brief announcement issued yesterday by Eurostat, the EU statistical service. One decimal of a percentage unit in a statistical survey conducted by a sample of thousands to draw conclusions for a […]Statistics show the ugly face of youth training schemes
November 28, 2013 by 2 Comments
Thank God Eurostat, the EU statistical service and the Eurobarometer surveys, are still there and can produce reports refuting some commonly accepted pseudo-truths. Of course statisticians can also lie but it’s easy to expose them, while it’s much more difficult to expose the lies commonly used by politicians. A characteristic example is traineeships. This is […]A sterilised EMU may lead to a break up of Eurozone
November 12, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Ahead of the ‘The European Employment Forum’ which takes place in Brussels today and tomorrow and according to its organisers is ‘the annual networking forum for everyone involved in employment and enterprise within the EU and beyond’, there was an increased activity over the burning issue of jobs and unemployment in Europe. To this effect, […]This crisis cannot be confronted with statistics
October 30, 2013 by 1 Comment
Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union, announced yesterday the launch of a new series of annual publications, entitled “Smarter, greener, more inclusive? – Indicators to support the Europe 2020 strategy”. According to the relevant Press release, “The purpose of this publication is to provide statistics to support the Europe 2020 strategy and to […]EU regional differences betray an unjust arrangement
October 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Predictably, regional statistics on employment, incomes and the risk of poverty could mirror in a more accurate way, how the economic crisis has affected the more deprived and the moret affluent regions of the European Union. National averages can serve well the comparative analysis between EU’s member states. Regional data however would go deeper in […]Eurozone: Uncertain future with unemployment ravaging the South
October 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Unemployment in Eurozone remained unchanged last August at 12% in relation to July, when it had slightly receded, compared with the 12.1% in June. This marginal reduction of unemployment in July was hailed as an indication that Eurozone is about to abandon its long term recession, an estimate also based on a marginal increase of […]Why European manufacturing SMEs in the South face fatal dangers
September 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
During this week in Brussels there was a lot of talk about Europe’s industrial competitiveness. The Competitiveness Council, part of the Council of the European Union, is currently meeting in Brussels, on September 26-27, for the first time formally under the Lithuanian Presidency. This Council brings together the EU ministers responsible for the single market, […]Job vacancy data reveal better prospects for Britain, stagnation in Eurozone
September 18, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Job vacancy statistics is not a widely used analytical tool despite the fact that is follows more accurately a number of vital social and economic variables, like the robustness of growth or the steepness of fall of economic activity. They are also indicative of the structural effectiveness of labour market workings, of the efficacy of […]Can Eurozone’s uncertain growth answer the challenges that lie ahead?
September 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Bit by bit the much advertised resumption of economic activity in Eurozone fades away. The fall of unemployment rate by just one decimal point to 12.1% in June and the increase of GDP during the second quarter of this year by 0.3% fuelled overoptimistic estimates that Eurozone has definitively left behind the lowest part of […]Europe turns out more jobs this summer
August 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In July 2013, for a second month in a row, unemployment rates remained unchanged in both Eurozone and the EU28 at 12.1% and 11% respectively, according to a Eurostat Press release issued today. Eurostat is the EU statistical service. The same source notes that, “26.654 million men and women in the EU28, of whom 19.231 […]New phenomena in the EU labour market
August 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Everybody feels that the economic crisis haunting Eurozone increases the divergence between its northern and southern segments. It’s Eurostat however, the EU statistical service, that gave solid proof to this general feeling. Eurostat writer Martin Teichgraber undertook the task to analyse the impact that this crisis has on the labour market, in a paper entitled […]The Europeans with a job diminish dangerously
June 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Last Saturday 15 June the President of the European Commission Manuel Barroso was in Rome and met with the Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta. In a Press conference after the meeting the EU dignitary, probably for the 100th time, spoke about “the drama of the high level of youth unemployment in many parts of Europe”. […]How distorted is the EU labour market by this crisis?
June 11, 2013 by 1 Comment
Once more Eurostat, the EU statistical service, went a step forward and produced deep socio-economic analysis with labour market data, than sheer statistical tables. Without colouring its statistics with ideology, the choice of the variables to analyse and present betray a scientific strictness accompanied however with increased susceptibility towards inequality and exclusion. This time it […]Appalling overall unemployment in Eurozone at 20.6%
April 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment
As it turns out real total unemployment exceeds by far the already dreadful percentages estimated by the national statistical services of the EU countries. According to a press release issued by Eurostat, the EU statistical service, in the EU of 27 member states apart from the tens of millions of the “normal” unemployed, there is […]Facts and prejudices about work
April 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The European Union and more so the Eurozone countries change fast into service sector economies, increasingly favouring the transfer of the heavy production burden of industry and agriculture to the developing economies. This is not necessarily a negative development given that labour in services is generally less demanding, at least physically, and it is rather […]The vicious cycle of poverty and exclusion spreads fast engulfing more children
April 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to a Eurostat study on people at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion (AROPE), the ongoing economic and financial crisis has seriously affected the relevant indicators. Eurostat is the statistical service of the European Union. AROPE is the headline indicator to monitor the EU2020 Strategy poverty target. According to Euroastat it reflects the share of the population […]Can Eurozone stand economic and financial fragmentation?
April 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Eurozone unemployment rate peaked in February 2013 at 12% but this number says nothing about the real structural problems of the single money zone. The burning issue is the fast growing divergence of unemployment opportunities between the surplus countries in the North and the over indebted member states in the South, plus Ireland. According to […]Eurozone recession subsides
March 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
According to the €-coin index the euro area growth remained negative for the 18th month in a row in March 2013, after the index turned negative in October 2011. The index measures the level of economic activity in the entire Eurozone and predicts GDP developments some months before the official data appear. The only positive […]Young and unemployed the perfect victims of ‘vultures’
March 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Slowly, but surely, unemployment in Eurozone keeps rising, posing growing pressures on economic policy planners all over the European Union. The problem has taken devastating dimensions in Eurozone countries applying the EU-ECB-IMF financial rehabilitation programmes (Greece, Portugal and Ireland), or self-imposed austerity measures as in Spain and Italy. More particularly in Greece, Spain, Portugal and […]
