P.M. BRIEFING : Employment Up Since ‘87, EEC Says

BRUSSELS — The European Economic Community’s first annual report on employment in the 12-nation trade bloc released today showed a rise of 2.5 million jobs since 1987 instead of a predicted drop of 500,000.

EEC Commissioner for Social Affairs Vasso Papandreou said forecasts on the impact of the EEC’s plans to create a single, borderless market by Dec. 31, 1992, were “wrong.”

But, Papandreou said, “despite the improvements there is still a problem of underemployment” in the community.

The report showed that the rate of employment in the EEC--that is, the number of people who have a job divided by the number of people of working age--had dropped to less than 60% from 64% 20 years ago. Papandreou said this was “substantially below that in other industrialized parts of the world.”