Tracking euro area labour market developments through restructuring announcements

This box examines whether large-scale restructuring announcements recorded in the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) compiled by Eurofound contain economically meaningful signals of euro area labour market dynamics. We construct a net job changes indicator, demonstrating that its lagged values contain information on episodes of below-average employment performance ahead of official data releases. While ERM coverage is limited by construction, focusing on large firms and manufacturing-intensive sectors, it captures restructuring events in firms employing between one-third and one-half of the total euro area workforce, making it a timely complement to standard aggregate statistics.