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In unemployment, as in many other areas, Germany stands alone at the top of the eurozone.
The European Union’s statistical agency, Eurostat, reported this week that the unemployment rate among German adults fell to 5.1 per cent in June, the lowest figure since the country was unified in 1991.
Among workers younger than 25, the German unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.9 per cent, the lowest level since 1993. But in most of Europe, unemployment rates are rising, and unemployment rates among the young are hitting highs that would have been unthinkable only a couple of years ago.
In the US, as in Germany, unemployment rates have been trending lower for more than a year. In July, the adult rate in the US was unchanged at 6.9 per cent, while the rate for young workers fell a tenth of a per cent to 16.4 per cent.
But adult rates have been rising in most of Europe. The unemployment rate for young people has also been climbing in many countries, although it is declining in France.
Germany’s overall gain in employment reflects the strength of its export-oriented economy, which has benefited from the fact that many of its European neighbors have lost competitiveness. The relatively low jobless rate among young people has also been helped by German social policies that encourage many young people to enter paid apprenticeships when they finish school.
In September 2008, the month that Lehman Brothers failed, the adult unemployment rate in Germany was 6.7 per cent, precisely the same as the rate in the rest of the eurozone. Now, the rest of the eurozone has an adult rate of 11.9 per cent, more than double the German rate. Nowhere has the reversal of fortune been sharper than in Spain. Before the financial crisis, the country was booming, largely because of a property bubble that held the seeds of its own destruction. The government was running budget surpluses and unemployment was lower for both adults and young people than it was in neighbouring France.
Now, the adult unemployment rate exceeds 22 per cent, meaning that one in five workers cannot find a job. Among youths, fewer than half are able to find employment. Those out-of-work people can expect little help from within the country. The Spanish government is barely able to finance itself, and its banking system, devastated by bad property loans, needed to be bailed out by Europe.
Things are not as bad in Italy, at least for adult workers. The unemployment rate has been rising, and is estimated to be above 9 per cent. But more than one-third of the young people looking for work are unable to find it.