Eurozone employment falls since outbreak of financial crisis

Euro area and EU employment began to fall as the global financial crisis began, official figures showed Thursday.

The number of persons employed in the 16-nation euro area fell by 1.8 percent between the second quarters of 2008 and 2009, representing 145.5 million persons, according to first estimates from the European Union's statistics agency Eurostat.

During the same period, the number of persons employed in the 27-nation EU, which represents 222.7 million persons, decreased by1.9 percent.

The fall started in the second quarter of 2008 as a result of the economic crisis, said Eurostat.

The fall in employment was smaller than the contraction of economic activity, which was minus 4.9 percent GDP growth in the EU and minus 4.8 percent in the euro area during the same period.

That was because employers had reduced the volume of hours worked and increased the use of part-time employment.

In the year up to the second quarter of 2009, the average number of actual hours worked per week by people in full-time employment fell by 0.7 hours (from 41.0 hours per week to 40.3) inthe EU and by 0.8 hours (from 40.8 to 40.0) in the euro area, while between the second quarters of 2007 and 2008 there had been a rise by 0.3 hours in both zones.

Source:Xinhua