Unemployment rates went down in Greece from 16,2% to 15,8% last month. Which hints their economy is growing a bit. Careful: The implication "unemployment rate

Unemployment rates went down in Greece from 16,2% to 15,8% last month. Which hints their economy is growing a bit. Careful: The implication "unemployment rate goes down => economy is growing" is not true in general. The rate of unemployment is always defined relative to the active part of the population, where active means either employed or looking for work. In extreme downturns, as Greece has experienced, the participation rate naturally drops because people become disillusioned. This can have the bizarre effect that the unemployment rate drops even though the total number of jobs actually decreases. So the absolute number (and then also the rate) of unemployed decreases not because the unemployed become employed, but rather because they become economically inactive (i.e., they give up). I am not sure if this is what is happening in Greece, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was. The interfaces of most national statistics institutions are really horrible, so I haven't looked at the numbers. I assume you got those numbers out of some newspaper or similar, and I just wanted to point out that especially in extreme economic circumstances, reporting only the unemployment rate is irresponsible - but unfortunately, that's what most media is. Final thought: Comparing the United States to the Eurozone is to misunderstand the nature of the beasts. Both have a common currency, but the US has a significant central monetary sovereign. The Eurozone has no monetary sovereign. The differences this implies are enormous.