"The grim unemployment figures for March will likely encourage talk about a long overdue ‘growth pact' for the euro zone"
- Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Group
Euro area unemployment rose to the highest level since 1997 in March and manufacturing contracted in April, adding to signs the economy is still far from out of the woods. The jobless rate rose to 10.9 per cent in March from 10.8 per cent in February, said the European Union statistics office on Wednesday.
"The grim unemployment figures for March will likely encourage talk about a long overdue ‘growth pact' for the euro zone," said Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING Group in Amsterdam."Survey measures of hiring intentions point to further increases in unemployment over the coming months, so we would expect unemployment to breach the 11 percent threshold."
"The question is how long EU leaders will continue to pursue a deeply flawed strategy in the face of mounting evidence that this is leading us to social, economic and political disaster," said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define.
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