Employment levels in the eurozone fell to their lowest level in more than three years at the end of 2009 after a sixth consecutive quarter of job destruction.
The number of jobs in the single currency area remained lower than before the economic downturn in spite of more people being of working age, according to seasonally adjusted figures from Eurostat, the European Union's statistics agency. In many countries, the fall in the number of jobs is outstripping a rise in unemployment, suggesting part of the population has dropped out of the potential labour force altogether.
In Spain, for example, 40,000 people were listed as newly unemployed in the three months to December but there were 150,000 fewer jobs in the economy.
Figures for the eurozone show that, in the last six months of 2009, the number of available jobs fell 1.1m, whereas unemployment rose 855,000.
A large part of that difference will consist of people who were no longer listed as unemployed because they were no longer actively looking for work.
"Labour participation rates tend to go down during a recession," said Paul Swaim, an economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. "People look at the state of the labour market and some decide to return to education, for example. Some people near retirement age decide not to work, though they might have done so if conditions were better."
The rate of job destruction fell to 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter from a peak of 0.8 per cent in the first and 0.5 per cent thereafter. The January unemployment rate in the eurozone was 9.9 per cent.