Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context. 

1 December 2013

The stark divide between the rich north of Europe and the poor south is strikingly illustrated by figures just out for the proportion of young people of working age – between 15 and 24 – who were jobless in October 2013 in 16 of the 17 countries that belong to the single-currency eurozone.

The figures show that nearly a quarter – a record 24.4  % – are out of work in the eurozone as a whole.

However, the percentage for Germany was 7.8 %, for instance, while for the Netherlands it was 11.6 %.

The figure for Spain, by contrast, was 57.4 %, for Italy 41.2 % and for Portugal 36.5 %.

Greece, the leading economic basket case in southern Europe, is unable to collect its statistics as fast as the other Eurozone states – doubtless because, in order to plug a massive and widening hole in the country’s public debt,  it has been engaged in wholesale sacking of the civil servants responsible for collecting the statistics.

Consequently, figures for Greece for October 2013 are yet to be published. However, the Greek figures for August 2013 registered a percentage of 58 % – marginally ahead of the latest data for Spain – putting Greece top of the heap for youth unemployment in the eurozone.

Antigone1984:

Introduced gradually between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2002, the eurozone was supposed to bring about a convergence in the economies of those states which replaced their national currencies with the euro.

If only!

Yet another nail in the coffin of the great homogenic misonational one-size-fits-all Europeanization project.

When will they ever learn?

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 You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts.  For instance:

1. Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)

2. Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)

3. The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)

4. Capitalism in practice  (4 July 2012) 

5.Ladder  (21 June 2012)

 6. A tale of two cities (1)  (6 June 2012)

 7. A tale of two cities (2)  (7 June 2012)

 8. Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)

Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.

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