More than 22 million jobs have been created since the low point for employment at the end of the last downturn, and the pace of job gains has been amazingly consistent. Until this expansion, even in good times, scarcely a year went by without at least one month when payrolls shrank.
The Governing Council of the ECB has been confronted with the risks stemming from a prolonged period of exceptionally low inflation, if not outright deflation. These risks are considered particularly high in the current conditions of policy rates at historical lows, possibly marked disanchoring of inflation expectations, and high levels of public and private debt.