* Orders in Germany slide; demand for consumer goods rises

Manufacturing orders in the 17 countries that share the euro fell 1.3 percent in the month after a 1.5 percent rise in October, the European Union's statistics office Eurostat said.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected a 2.2 percent fall in November.

Two years after the euro zone's debt crisis broke over the continent, business confidence and household spending have evaporated and that impact has cascaded down to factories producing everything from machinery to toys.

New orders in Germany, the euro zone's manufacturing powerhouse, fell 5 percent in November, in a sign that the crisis has reverberated across the globe, hurting demand for German goods.

Businesses are cutting back as they wait for political leaders to resolve the debt crisis, and new orders for capital goods -- machinery to produce other goods -- fell by 2.1 percent in the euro area in November.

However, new orders for durable consumer goods such as televisions, furniture and cars rose 0.9 percent after falling in October, and economists are unclear just how deep the contraction in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012 will be.

A surprise upturn in the euro zone services and manufacturing purchasing managers' surveys also released on Tuesday indicated that output edged up in January after four months of contraction.

"This boosts hopes that euro zone economic activity is stabilizing after the economic contraction that we estimate around 0.4 percent quarter-on-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2011," said Howard Archer, an economist at IHS Global Insight.

(Reporting By Robin Emmott; editing by Luke Baker)