There is actually a glimmer of hope even in europe. However, probably not as much in the UK as the UK got hit much harder than other european countries by the economic crisis. Don't make the mistake by judging all of europe by UK or irish standards both in terms of new jobs and quality of said jobs.
We didn't have to fire pilots and in fact had to hire them lately while we still could use quite a few more but do not have the necessary training capacity at the moment. With the ongoing union negotiations about new working conditions (FTL and the like, not pay) we face still another necessary hiring spree later this year and honestly do not know how we will cope in the summer due to lack of staff, our turboprop subsidiary is currently subchartering capacity because they do not have enough staff to operate one of their planes while the mainline FOs are flying near their maximum duty time. Of course this is only one of many airlines and only one of three or so hiring in germany at the moment whereas many others in europe are in much worse shape and quite a few went bust.