Euro area is in a recession
Eurostat revised its forecast for GDP growth in the first quarter of 2023. As a result, the expected growth figure has been lowered from 0.1% to -0.1%. This is an indication that the Eurozone, comprising the 19 countries that use the euro as their currency, is in a technical recession.
At the same time, despite the Europe-wide data, Luxembourg has one of the highest GDP growth rates at 2%. The only country with higher growth is Poland, which managed to achieve 3.8 %.
Portugal also recorded an increase in GDP of 1.6%. However, not all countries performed well: Ireland recorded the strongest GDP decline of -4.6%. Lithuania also recorded a significant decrease: -2.1 %, while the Netherlands saw a more moderate contraction of -0.7 %.
The final consumption of private households has fallen, as have imports. Exports to the EU, on the other hand, grew by 0.1 %.
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Eurostat also reported that employment rose by 0.6 % in Europe. Estonia led the way with an impressive 4.4 % increase in employment compared with the previous quarter. Malta followed close behind with a significant increase of 2.9 %. Ireland showed steady growth of 1.6 %.
On the other hand, Lithuania, Romania and Greece saw employment fall over the same period. The largest decline was recorded in Lithuania, where employment fell by a substantial 1.5 %. Romania followed with a fall of 1.1 %, while Greece recorded a more modest decline of 0.3 %.
As for the Grand Duchy, Luxembourg remains stable in terms of its employment rate. As in the previous quarter, the rate remained stable at 0.6 %.
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