The European Union’s statistics agency said consumer prices in July were 0.2% higher than a year earlier (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eurozone-inflation-stable-as-jobless-number-rises-2015-07-31), meeting expectations of analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires.
Advertisement
The European Central Bank has interest rates close to zero and this year began a money-printing quantitative easing (QE) scheme, buying government bonds and other assets to pump around 1 trillion euros ($1.1 trillion) into the economy so as to boost growth and prices.
“On the face of it a disappointing set of data for the eurozone” said Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight.
Core inflation, which strips prices of volatile items such as energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, rose to 1 per cent, up from 0.8 per cent in the year to the end of June.
A breakdown of the preliminary price data – for which final figures are due on August. 13 – showed that energy prices dropped sharply on the year while the cost of goods also fell.
In June, the jobless rate came in at 11.1 percent, unchanged from May, a report from Eurostat showed.
The youth unemployment rate in the 19-nation bloc rose to 22.5 percent in June from 22.3 percent in May.
Eurostat said there were some 17.76 million unemployed in the eurozone in June up 31000 from May even as the headline rate remained unchanged.
Among the many euro member states, Greece had the very best fee at 25.6 % and Germany the bottom degree at four. 7 %.
James Howat, European Economist at Capital Economics, said the figures were not positive: “Worryingly, surveys of employment intentions have weakened recently, suggesting that the labour market recovery will remain pretty weak”.
Advertisement
The figure, which matched the Reuters consensus forecast, remained far short of the ECB’s inflation target for the broader euro zone of just below 2 percent over the medium term.
