The unemployment rate was established at 8.4% in May in the eurozone according to figures published by Eurostat, marking the lowest level since December 2008 when this rate averaged 7.5%.
France, which is among the lowest in the zone, at 9.2%, is also the EU member whose unemployment is decreasing the slowest since the beginning of the recovery.
The painful times of the debt crisis in the Union, which had pushed this proportion to a disastrous 12.1% in mid-2013, seem to be behind us.
How can this improvement in employment be explained? The global recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis seems to have ended: three months ago, the OECD announced a global growth nearing 4%, a peak since 2010.
However, this figure of 8.4% hides significant regional disparities, particularly between the performing northern countries and those in the south, which for some cannot overcome structural and economically and socially ruinous unemployment.
The Germanic countries, notably — Germany (3.4%) and Austria (4.6%) —, are among the best performers in terms of employment. The unemployment rate, which did not exceed 7.6% at the height of the crisis, has now fallen below 4%.
The southern states form the tail end of the pack. Even if in the eurozone “the most marked decreases were observed in Greece (from 22.1% to 20.1% between March 2017 and March 2018) and in Portugal (from 9.2% to 7.3%).
Then comes the case of France. While our country was rather spared from the mass unemployment that hit the West after 2008 (then rising from 7.4% to 10.4% at the peak of the debt crisis in 2015), it has not managed to reduce it either due to the lack of appropriate reforms.
It is the EU member whose unemployment is decreasing the slowest since the beginning of the recovery (a decrease of only 9% between 2015 and 2017)!
