Since the start of EMU, around 15.7 million people have been added to the number of employees in the euro area, in comparison to approximately 5.5 million in the nine preceding years. At the same time, the euro area unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level since the early 1980s.
The latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES 2009) provides us with useful lens through which we can view the saving – and thus investing – capacity of families. It tells us for example that roughly 90 percent of the total saving is generated by only 30 percent of families.