7 Although this is a very encouraging fact, which shows that the positive employment effect we witnessed over the last ten years has significantly helped us to counteract the growth differential to the US, one has to remain aware of the inferior starting position of euro area countries. These improvements did not cancel out structural weaknesses of labour markets.
First of all, despite the important progress recorded, the overall employment rate in the euro area remains low by international standards [64.5% in the euro area compared with 72% in the US in 2006] and the unemployment rate is still clearly too high [7.9% compared with 4.6% in the US on annual average in 2006 and 7.1 % to be compared to 4.5 % in April this year].