While fiscal reforms can reduce fiscal pressures, employment and earnings growth is essential everywhere both for reducing benefit spending, and for shoring up government revenues now and in the longer term. This is illustrated by the lasting difficulties that some countries are having in moving revenues and benefit spending towards pre-crisis levels - notably in Southern Europe, which saw major austerity measures while continuing to record rising unemployment and declining or stagnating GDP. The vertical axis is inverted (a positive number indicates an increase in social benefit expenditure and, hence, a deteriorating budget balance).