Eurozone unemployment falls to decade low 8.2 percent

LONDON — Unemployment across the 19-country eurozone has fallen to its lowest level since the most acute phase of the global financial crisis a decade ago.

Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, revealed Friday that the unemployment rate in July was 8.2 percent. That was unchanged from the previous month’s rate, which Eurostat revised down from 8.3 percent.

The rate is now the lowest since November 2008, when unemployment was soaring in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, the most symbolic moment of the financial crisis. Unemployment hit a peak of 12.1 percent in 2013 when the crisis, at least for the eurozone, morphed into a government debt crisis largely centered on Greece. Across the eurozone, there were 13.38 million people unemployed in July, down a monthly 73,000.

Though the overall decline was widespread, there are still big disparities across the region. Some countries, like Germany, are operating at what economists term full employment, with the jobless rate only 3.4 percent. Others such as Spain and Italy have double-digit unemployment rates.

Though the falls in unemployment over the past few years have been welcome, wages haven’t picked up as much as they would normally be expected to during an economic recovery — the general rule of thumb is that as employment levels increase amid higher levels of growth, workers can win bigger pay awards .

The European Central Bank, which sets interest rates for the countries that use the euro as their currency, wants wages to increase to help lift soft underlying levels of inflation. Despite a second-quarter surge in wages, that hasn’t happened — yet.

Separate figures Friday from Eurostat showed that underlying inflation remains anemic despite a 2.2 percent jump in wages for the second quarter.

In the year to August, the core rate, which strips out potentially volatile items such as food and energy, dipped to 1 percent from the previous month’s 1.1 percent.

Bert Colijn, a senior economist at ING, said the core rate needs to move higher for a “sustained higher inflation rate” and “the much-anticipated acceleration has so far failed to happen.”