Many European countries have introduced measures to stabilize the job market (international perspective)
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Many European governments have recently launched a new round of economic stimulus policies in an effort to stabilize the labor market and promote economic recovery.
The analysis believes that there are still many uncertain factors in the process of economic recovery in Europe, and the economic assistance policies introduced by various countries need to be more targeted, and at the same time strive to create new employment growth points in order to achieve better results.
Affected by factors such as the rebound of the epidemic in some regions, the recovery of the European economy has not been as expected. Many governments have recently launched a new round of economic stimulus policies to increase support for key links such as the job market and small and medium-sized enterprises.
At the Eurozone Finance Ministers meeting held recently, all parties expressed that they will continue to maintain the current support for the economy and will not adopt fiscal austerity policies in the short term.
A new round of economic stimulus plans have been introduced
A few days ago, the French government launched a new round of economic stimulus plans totaling 100 billion euros, focusing on enhancing corporate competitiveness and promoting employment.
French Prime Minister Castel said: "At this stage, the focus of our policy is still to consider how to increase public investment to boost the economy."
Other European countries are also actively launching new economic boost plans.
The German Federal Government has recently decided to extend the short-time work policy until the end of 2021, and launched a plan to stabilize the job market with a total of 10 billion euros.
German Finance Minister Scholz said that he is considering adjusting the annual budget and launching a new economic recovery plan of at least 80 billion euros.
The European Commission has also recently approved new rescue plans of various scales in Austria, the Czech Republic, Romania and other countries.
In response to the continued decline in inflation in the Eurozone, the European Central Bank’s chief economist Philip Longen said that the European Central Bank should consider adopting new stimulus policies as soon as possible to prevent the European economy from falling into low inflation and low prices for a long time.
The Eurostat's second-quarter data showed that the Eurozone economy as a whole shrank by 14.7% year-on-year, with Spain, France and Italy becoming the countries with the worst decline.
The Eurozone’s IHS MARKIT Comprehensive Purchasing Manager Index (PMI), an important parameter for measuring economic health, fell from 54.9 in July to 51.9 in August, again approaching the line of prosperity and decline, showing that the recent economic recovery in the euro area has fluctuated. The economy is still in trouble.
Daniel Al Odonets, an economist at the Oxford Economics Institute in the United Kingdom, said that the economic recovery in the euro zone has recently cooled down, and the level of recovery among member states is not balanced.
Clemmons Foster, chairman of the German think tank IFO Economic Research Institute, recently stated that although the European economy has shown signs of recovery under the support of various policies in the early stage, the overall situation is still relatively fragile and there is still a long way to go before the economy is on track. To go.
Make every effort to prevent a sharp decline in the job market
With the support of various rescue programs, the employment situation in many European countries has improved, but the overall weakness of the labor market has not changed.
Data from Eurostat showed that employment in the euro zone fell by 2.9% in the second quarter, the largest drop since 1995.
In terms of absolute numbers, all member states except Malta experienced a decline in employment.
As of August, the total number of unemployed persons in the Eurozone has reached 12.79 million, and the EU as a whole has reached 15.18 million.
Some analysts pointed out that with the gradual expiration of government support policies, the overall unemployment rate in the EU may face the risk of a sharp surge.
Affected by the crisis, European companies have a serious lack of confidence in expanding investment and spending. Many companies have expressed that they will make necessary layoffs after the end of government subsidies.
At present, the aviation industry is the first to set off a wave of layoffs. The three major European aviation groups Lufthansa, British International Airways and Air France-KLM announced that they will cut 22,000, 12,000 and 7,500 jobs respectively.
According to the forecast of the International Aviation Association, there will be 6 to 7 million aviation-related jobs in Europe in 2020 that will be affected to varying degrees.
The state of the tourism industry is also worrying.
According to the forecast of the World Tourism and Travel Council in the second quarter, European tourism revenue in 2020 will fall 54% from the previous year, and the loss of related jobs will reach at least 14.2 million.
A recent study by Ipsos, a world-renowned market research group, shows that unemployment has become the primary concern of France, Italy, Spain and other countries.
Fabio Panetta, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, said that if the economic recovery is insufficient, the market will face a greater impact.
Many corporate employees who take temporary leave may not have the opportunity to return to their posts.
Andy Harden, chief economist at the Bank of England, said that the European labor market has greater hidden dangers and it is necessary to make every effort to prevent repeated and long-term high unemployment in the job market.
In response to the main challenges facing the European economy, policies of various countries have focused on maintaining the labor market.
Germany, France, Spain and other major EU member states have all decided to extend the employment guarantee mechanism, including the short-time work system.
Currently, there are more than 25 million small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe, accounting for more than 99% of all enterprises, creating more than 100 million jobs.
In order to prevent the unemployment rate from rising sharply, the governments of the European Union and its member states have taken the support of small and medium-sized enterprises as the core of their economic assistance programs.
Through the strategic investment fund, the European Union has released more than 1 billion euros of funds, stimulated banks to provide liquidity to more than 100,000 small and micro enterprises, and provided 100 billion euros of financial support to member states through the emergency support plan to ease the unemployment crisis.
EU member states have also adopted all relevant corporate relief measures such as tax relief and loan guarantees.
In addition, many governments have also worked hard to promote the expansion of youth employment and vocational training, and have allocated subsidies to expand the employment of young people.
Economic transformation can help create new opportunities
Some experts believe that the cost of continuous economic stimulus policies will be too high and will put considerable pressure on public and corporate debt levels.
According to statistics, since the epidemic, the EU level has launched an economic stimulus plan totaling 1.3 trillion euros, while member governments have introduced various policies of more than 3.7 trillion euros.
In the future, once the government has to increase tax rates and cut spending to deal with debt problems, the economy will be under tremendous pressure.
European economist Martin Sandbu called for the current economic recovery in Europe to be at a critical stage, and policymakers should be very cautious on the issue of withdrawing stimulus policies.
A related report recently released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pointed out that policies such as the short-time work system do play a positive role in retaining existing posts, but they have limited effects in promoting economic structural transformation and job adjustment after the epidemic.
The OECD recommends that European governments adopt more flexible policy time limits, and at the same time gradually adjust the policy focus from maintaining existing jobs to helping workers strengthen vocational training, adapting to economic transformation, and changing the relief method from wage subsidies to conventional unemployment protection. And encourage laborers to actively seek employment.
At present, the economic stimulus plans of various countries have increased their tilt towards green economy and digital transformation, hoping to create new employment growth points through investment in "future industries".
In the French government’s 100 billion bailout plan, 30 billion was earmarked for investment in a green economy to encourage the development of environmentally friendly industries; the German federal government previously launched a large economic stimulus plan to promote a new energy economy and digital transformation as a policy The United Kingdom has launched a green investment plan with a total of 3 billion pounds, including the promotion of energy-saving renovation in the building sector, which is expected to create at least 140,000 jobs.
The EU level has also increased policy guidance and financial support for the development of "future industries".
In the "Strategic Foresight Report" released by the European Commission for the first time a few days ago, it once again reiterated that the development of a green economy and digital economy will be an important driving force for European economic recovery.
Through the creation of a common data space, digital skills and employment alliance platform, the EU helps companies establish a more convenient transformation environment, and tilts the direction of improving EU corporate strategic digital capabilities in terms of fund allocation, including artificial intelligence, cyber security, communications, and digital Information, cloud foundation, 5G network and blockchain, etc.
(Our newspaper, Brussels, September 14th)