Eurozone employment rises to highest level since late 2008

Employment in the euro zone and across the European Union in the first quarter of the year increased 0.3% compared to the final three months of 2015, rising to the highest levels since the third quarter of 2008.

Seasonally adjusted data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, showed the rate of quarter-on-quarter increase for the euro zone remained the same as the previous period's 0.30%, while across the 28 states of the wider EU there was a fall from the fourth-quarter's 0.4% rate.

However, euro zone and EU employment rose 1.4% in the quarter compared the first quarter of 2015, up from the 1.2% euro zone rate in the preceding period and 1.3% for the EU.

Eurostat estimates that in the first quarter of 2016, 231.3m people were employed in the wider EU, of which 152.6m were in the euro area, which was the highest levels since the third quarter of 2008 in the EU and the fourth quarter of 2008 in the euro area.

Among EU member states, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Hungary recorded the increases of above 1% in the first quarter of 2016 compared with the previous quarter, while Poland's 0.5% suffered the worst decline, ahead of 0.1% falls for Greece, Latvia and the Netherlands.