Eurozone Economic Growth Trimmed To Zero, Quarter-On-Quarter, At End Of 2022

• The eurozone failed to register any growth quarter-on-quarter in the final three months of 2022, the European statistics agency said on Tuesday, slightly revising down both its GDP and employment growth numbers, although the latter remained strong.
• Eurozone economic growth was 0.0% in the fourth quarter compared with the third and 1.8% from a year earlier, Eurostat said in a statement. That compared with flash estimates of 0.1% and 1.9% published on February 14.
• The revisions still confirmed that the eurozone narrowly avoided the technical recession that had previously been expected.
• Eurostat also revised down the figure for employment growth in the eurozone to 0.3% quarter-on-quarter from a previously reported 0.4%. The year-on-year number was 1.5%, in line with earlier estimates. This pushed the total number of people with jobs to 165 million, 3.6 million more than at the end of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
• Strong employment growth highlights how tight the labour market is and signals a problem for the ECB in its fight to bring inflation back to 2% from the double-digit territory last autumn.
• A recession had been expected to boost the jobless rate, cooling the labour market and keeping a lid on wages. But firms, which struggled to rehire workers after the pandemic, appear to be hanging onto staff even through a slowdown.

(Source: Reuters)