The European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) quarterly has been launched by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound). It provides an overview of restructuring activities in Europe in the first quarter of 2011. According this edition, EU has announced job losses and job gains almost level.

According to the latest edition of the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) Quarterly, the recovery across the EU are taking two divergent patterns. One with Germany, central Europe, and the Baltic countries enjoying strong growth and improving labour markets while the debt-laden ‘periphery’ countries stagnate amid serial announcements of retrenchment. The narrowing gap between announced job losses and job gains on the ERM over the last number of quarters provides further evidence of economic recovery and the resumption of employment growth.

The EU economy has had positive growth for five consecutive quarters but the picture of economic performance across the region is anything but uniform. The contrasts are especially apparent in the labour market where the key indicator ranges from near full employment in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Austria (all below 5% unemployment).

The ERM recorded a total of 358 cases of restructuring during the first quarter of 2011. These cases involved 98,448 announced job losses and 69,025 announced job gains. Internal restructuring accounted for nearly 90% of the announced job losses. The decline in closures and bankruptcies recorded in the first quarter of 2010 lends support to hopes of recovery. In terms of sectors, the manufacturing sector reported the largest number of announced job gains (23,165) in the first quarter of 2011. This represents over 33% of the total job creation in this quarter. The second-ranking sector was retail with 15,770 job gains, followed by the real estate and business activity sector (13,715 new jobs) and transport and communications (6,840 new jobs). Over half of the job creation recorded in the manufacturing sector in this quarter is concentrated in auto manufacturing which shows encouraging signs of recovery too. 

With regard to the EU Members, the UK (37,772 jobs) recorded the greatest number of announced job losses, ahead of Poland and France with respectively 17,574 and 13,826 announced job losses. These same countries are also those recording the highest number of job gains, though job losses continue to outnumber job gains. The highest number of job gains was announced in France (21,137 jobs) followed by the UK (11,919 jobs) and Poland (11,481 jobs).

The IT sector is one of the few sectors that has continued expanding its recruitment over the past decade but interest from students and recent graduates appears to be relatively low. This is thought to be due to fewer people taking IT courses, a rise in the number of graduates choosing not to work in IT over the past five years, and pay for IT roles lagging behind that for positions in other sectors.