First of all, despite the progress recorded on the labour market side, the overall employment rate in the euro area remains low by international standards [63.5% in the euro area compared with 71.5% in the US in 2005] and the unemployment rate is clearly too high [8.6% compared with 5.1% in the US in 2005 5 .
Moreover, in 2005 the number of annual hours worked in the euro area was 1603 compared to 1804 in the US. All in all, this clearly suggests that there is still considerable room for improvement as regards increasing the level of labour resource utilisation in Europe.