Explaining the resilience of the euro area labour market between 2022 and 2024

Clémence Berson, Vasco Botelho, António Dias Da Silva, Claudia Foroni, Matthias Mohr, Christofer Schroeder and Marco Weißler

Economic Bulletin Articles, 2025, vol. 8

Abstract: In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the euro area labour market showed remarkable resilience despite weak economic growth and various challenges, including supply chain disruptions, the energy crisis and geopolitical tensions. The relative strength of the labour market compared with economic activity led to a marked decline in measures of labour productivity. Factors such as reduced real wages, increased profit margins, lower average hours worked and strong labour force growth contributed to favourable labour market dynamics, encouraging firms to hire or retain workers. Looking ahead, there are signs of easing in the labour market as some of the factors sustaining employment subside, aligning labour market dynamics more closely with economic activity. Nevertheless, structural issues, such as declining average hours worked and labour force dynamics, may persist. JEL Classification: E24, J2

Keywords: average hours worked; labour hoarding; Labour market; labour productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01
Note: 686280
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ecb.europa.eu//press/economic-bulletin ... 2~8e16d5aa2f.en.html (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbart:2025:0008:2

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Bulletin Articles from European Central Bank 60640 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Official Publications ().