US Edition Europe is stuck in a jobs crisis. Eight years on from the financial crash, unemployment remains the biggest threat to the social fabric of the single currency's weakest economies.
The latest round of labour market data show the average unemployment rate in the 19-country bloc fell to 10.4pc, its lowest level since September 2011.
But the headline number masks a pernicious divide between the strongest and weakest (see map above). German unemployment hit a post-reunification high in December 2015, falling to just 4.5pc.
As Europe's largest economy motors along steadily - Germany has created 33,000 jobs a month on average over the last six years - the single currency's laggards are still not catching up.
In Greece, unemployment rates have been stuck at around a quarter of the population since 2014.
Italy's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 11.4pc at the end of December - despite the reformist efforts of prime minister Matteo Renzi, who has been on a two-year bid to transform the fortunes of the debt-laden economy.
The number of Italians in work fell by 21,000 in December compared to the month prior, while the registered unemployed grew by 18,000.
It is not just the beleaguered south that is grappling with labour market woes. Finland's jobless rate grew by 0.4 percentage points to 9.2pc at the end of 2015, the country's highest December unemployment rate since the pre-euro days of 1998.
Although the broader trend of declining unemployment is good news - jobless numbers have been falling for 15 consecutive months - economists fear the momentum behind the eurozone's cyclical recovery is now slowing.
Unemployment is generally seen as a lagging indicator for the health of an economy, and December's declines were the smallest since June 2015.
Should the recovery begin to run out of steam in the next 18 months, Europe could enter another global recession with double digit unemployment. This compares to its pre-crisis average of just 7.5pc. In other parts of the advanced world - namely the US and Britain - unemployment has fallen to 5pc.
Under its most optimistic forecast, the IMF predicts jobless rates will only hit 9pc by 2020, when the eurozone's economic slack has all but been used up.
Even more worryingly than headline unemployment rates are the eye-watering levels of youth unemployment seen across the southern periphery. They remain at stuck at near 50pc of the population in Spain and Greece, and average 22pc in the eurozone as a whole.
Eurostat estimate that of the 4.454 million young people without jobs aged under 25 in the EU, just over 3 million, or 68pc, are concentrated in the 19 economies of the eurozone.
It is this chronic jobs crisis that has seen the most skilled and mobile parts of the labour force emigrate in their droves from the likes of Portugal and Greece, raising fears of a "lost generation" in Europe's periphery.