Markets Will Watch Euro Area Unemployment And Inflation Data

Markets Will Watch Euro Area Unemployment And Inflation Data

Financial markets are still swept away by the disastrous hurricane that struck the East coast in the United States, where the stock exchange was closed for two days in a row. In the euro area, traders anticipate inflation and unemployment data, as France sells medium-dated bills and Germany auctions 30-year debt.

The three-year-old debt crisis is still scrambling the 17-nation euro economy amid growing austerity measures and deepening contraction across major sectors, with euro area unemployment rate lingering high at 11.4 percent in August, and expected to jump even higher to a new record of 11.5 percent in September.

Joblessness is on the rise in troubled 17-bloc euro area as the economy probably continued to shrink in the third quarter following a contraction of 0.2 percent in the previous three months, with austerity measures across the region undermining consumer and business confidence and unemployment at a record.

In Germany, the number of unemployed people rose to seasonally adjusted 20 thousand from September to 2.94 million and the jobless rate held at 6.9 percent. In Spain, 5.8 million people are out of work, as jobless rate rose to 25 percent in the three months through September – the highest at least since 1976.

In the euro area, employers are finding it extremely difficult and quite troubling to survive the deepening economic slowdown, after the 17-nation economy contracted at a 0.2 percent rate in the second quarter of 2012, threatening to amplify the debt turmoil and prompt executives to step up layoffs.