Price growth and jobless fall eases pressure on ECB to act

Credit: Reuters/Yves Herman

Workers are seen at a construction site of a building which will house apartments and offices in central Brussels November 26, 2013.

The improvement is a welcome sign that the euro zone's rebound is picking up steam, more than five years after a financial crisis erupted that forced five countries from Cyprus to Spain to seek emergency aid from their neighbors.

The jobless rate in October fell to 12.1 percent, the first fall since February 2011, the European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Friday.

That was slightly better than the 12.2 percent that economists forecast but it belies a wide disparity across the 17 countries using the currency.

While just 5 percent of Austrians are unemployed, 27 percent of Greeks and Spaniards are without a job. In total, 19 million people are out of work.

Consumer prices in the euro zone rose by 0.9 percent in November, higher than the 0.8 percent forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.

The annual inflation rate was also up from the 0.7 percent level in October, a sharp drop from September that surprised policymakers and raised concerns about the threat of deflation.

Energy prices fell in November, but the rising pace of food inflation pulled up the overall reading. Still, there are wide divergences across the bloc, with Greece, Cyprus and Ireland suffering deflation in October.

For further details of Eurostat data click on: here

(Reporting by Robin Emmott and John O'Donnell)

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