The Labour Market in the Euro Area: And yet, it Moves!

Agostino Consolo, Claudia Foroni and Hjelm, Linnéa

No 21306, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Unlike past high-inflation episodes, the euro area labour market remained surprisingly resilient during the inflation surge of the early 2020s. This paper investigates the drivers of this resilience by combining long-span euro area macroeconomic data (1970–2025) with a structural VAR analysis that disentangles the roles of aggregate demand and supply, monetary policy, and factor-substitution shocks. Our findings show that, in contrast to the 1970s and 1980s, the decline in real wages has supported labour demand and, more broadly, the labour market, thereby helping to explain the decoupling between output and employment. We also find that monetary policy shocks have had a stronger impact on output than on employment, further amplifying the pro-cyclicality of labour productivity.

Keywords: Labour markets; Bayesian vars (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E24 E32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
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