On Friday the Eurozone will report fourth-quarter employment changes. The previous report showed a quarterly contraction of 0.8% and while the unemployment rate in the Eurozone remained steady above 12.0% it has not contracted despite a pick-up in economic activity. The ECB is likely to watch employment data as closely as inflation data and forex traders should do the same in order to get some early sign of a potential move by the ECB.
This may be of interest to any self-respecting Euro Employment Data geek:
Eurostat - Tables, Graphs and Maps Interface (TGM) table
Best performer: Norway, with less than 4% unemployment;
worst performer: Greece, with about 28% unemployment.
Overall, the EU-28 has been steady with an average (over the last year) of between 10.8 and 11%.
I do not suspect that there will be any dramatic changes … but even that could be a boost: “No news is good news”.
IMO EUR will be negatively affected, as crysis in EU still raging.
The Russia sanction by G7 will play a medium term influence, but a nearer influence would be the high EUR, fewer tourist will flock to Greece and more imports will substitute local manufacture.