The biggest economies, including Germany, France and Italy, all showed weak growth, with only Spain enjoying a strong expansion.
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In the third quarter, there were 43.1m people in employment in Germany, 343,000 more than a year earlier.
Even though the country started the three-month period in the grip of a crisis that had it on the verge of leaving the euro, it appears to have coped – recent industrial production and retail sales figures have been relatively positive. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, GDP grew by 2.0% (after +2.7% in the previous quarter).
Consumer spending picked up pace, growing by 0.3 per cent, up from 0 per cent in the previous quarter.
The Statistics Office said domestic demand was the key driver of economic growth.
Without the consumer, the eurozone economy would have struggled to grow at all in the third quarter.
The quarterly growth was below the analyst estimate of 0.4 percent for the period and will fuel speculation the European Central Bank will expand its vast stimulus program next month.
Germany’s preliminary Q3 GDP printed at 0.3%, which was in line with forecasts but below Q2’s expansion of 0.4%. The decline was unsurprising given tough controls on money flows, including a 60-euro a day limit on ATM withdrawals, since late-June.
Eurozone trade surplus rose in September after easing in the previous month and exceeded economists’ expectations, figures from Eurostat showed Friday.
The eurozone’s economy grew by 0.3% in the third quarter of the year, official figures have shown.
Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, says it’s possible France may post growth of 0.5 percent.
Euro-area GDP is due from the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg at 11 a.m. Friday. The Labor Department said its producer price index for final demand fell by 0.4 percent in October after sliding by 0.5 percent in September. It left its 2016 forecast unchanged at 1.8 percent. Growth in French business investment accelerated in the third quarter, although overall investment was retarded as the state cut back.
Construction output decreased 0.2 percent from August, when it tumbled 3.4 percent, revised from a 4.3 percent fall reported earlier.
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The improvement in GDP underpins the French government’s expectation that the economy is on track to record the strongest year of growth since Socialist leader François Hollande became president in 2012.
