Europe’s employment recovery seems to be nearing an end

A DECADE AGO, as the sovereign-debt crisis engulfed the euro zone, long queues of the unemployed snaked outside job centres in Athens and Madrid. Unemployment, which had already been rising after the global financial crisis of 2007-08, took another jump up. By the summer of 2013 over a quarter of the workforce—and half of young people—were out of work in Greece and Spain. Then the crisis waned and the picture drastically improved. Unemployment has fallen by 40%, from more than 26m in the EU to just shy of 16m. Remarkably, the recovery has taken place even as more women and older people entered the workforce. Around 14m new jobs have been added, or around 6% of total employment.