While not always evident from the headlines, an underlying cause of the eurozone crisis – and now an obstacle for growth in the south – has been the divergence in production costs that developed between the peripheral countries, notably the “south” (specifically, Greece, Spain, Italy, and Portugal) and the “north” (for simplicity, Germany) during the first decade after the introduction of the euro. Unit labor costs in the four southern countries increased by 36%, 28%, 30%, and 25%, respectively, from 2000 to 2010, compared to less than 5% in Germany, resulting in an end-2010 cumulative divergence above 30% in Greece and more than 20% in Portugal, Italy, and Spain.
尽管新闻标题上很少提及，但欧元区危机的一大基本原因——以及如今南欧增长的一大障碍——是外围国家（主要是“南欧”国，以希腊、西班牙和葡萄牙为首）和“北欧”国（简单起见，可以德国代之）在使用欧元的第一个十年中生产成本的日渐分化。2000—2010年间，四大南欧国家单位劳动成本分别增长了36%、28%、30%和25%，而德国只增长了不到5%，这导致了希腊对德国的单位劳动成本累积差别达到了30%以上，葡萄牙、意大利和西班牙达到了20%以上。