Employment structure

The 2016 annual report from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) provides evidence of the employment impact of recent restructuring activity in Europe based on the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and the ERM events database. The thematic part of this year’s report centres on trends

In the 1990s, Alan Greenspan talked of ‘irrational exuberance’ in the stock markets. Unfounded optimism had driven share prices up to values that no rational analysis of company or country performance could justify. At the end of 2016, the Financial Times marked the end of the year by talking of

The IMF, in its October World economic outlook, has revised forecasts for global growth downwards to 3.1% in 2016. Sub-par growth in the developed world economies risks perpetuating itself, according to the Fund.

The principal political event of the quarter has been the decision of the UK electorate in favour of ‘Brexit’ from the European Union in a referendum held on 23 June. The outcome was a surprise and went against the counsel of most economists, policymakers and international organisations as well as

The European Jobs Monitor 2016 looks at 2011 Q2–2015 Q2 employment shifts at Member State and aggregate EU level. A ‘jobs-based’ approach is used to describe employment shifts quantitatively (how many jobs were created or destroyed) and qualitatively (what kinds of jobs). It also introduces a new

In its latest World economic outlook (April 2016), the IMF has again lowered global growth forecasts for the coming year. Two factors cited for this more downbeat assessment are weak growth in developing economies, notably China, and ‘political discord’ in other major economies.

In the last quarter of 2015, better economic data in the EU was overshadowed by increasing anxiety about the potential impact of declining growth and rising instability in developing economies. Aggregate unemployment rates in the Union are in their first sustained downward path since the global

Economic anxiety has resurfaced during the summer months and threatens to undermine the emergent European recovery. All of the things that should be helping to boost growth – ECB quantitative easing, the weak euro, low interest rates, cheap oil – appear to be having limited effect in the face of a