THE LATEST DATA from the European Union’s statistic house has revealed that more than 26 million men and women are unemployed across the 27 member states.
While the EU27 unemployment rate remained stable at 10.7 per cent in November 2012, the corresponding figure for the euro area jumped to 11.8 per cent (from 11.7 per cent in October 2012).
That translates to 18.82 million unemployed persons across the 17 eurozone countries.
Compared with October 2012, the number of people without jobs increased by 154,000 in the EU27 and by 113,000 in the euro area.
The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5 per cent), Luxembourg (5.1 per cent), Germany (5.4 per cent) and the Netherlands (5.6 per cent).
The highest rates were seen in Spain (26.6 per cent) and Greece (26 per cent).
The unemployment rate fell in just seven states but rose in 18 countries. In just one year, Greece’s unemployment increased from 18.9 per cent to 26 per cent. Estonia noted the largest decrease, bringing its unemployment rate from 12.1 per cent to 9.5 per cent.
Ireland’s figure for December remained unchanged at 14.6 per cent.
To offer a comparison, Eurostat noticed that the corresponding unemployment rates in the US and Japan were 7.8 per cant and 4.1 per cent.
Youth unemployment
In November 2012, almost 5.8 million people under the age of 25 were unemployed in the EU. That figure marks a rise of 329,000.
In both Greece and Spain, the unemployment rate among under-25s was more than half. Spain noted a 56.5 per cent rate, while Greece’s was even higher at 57.6 per cent.
The lowest rates of youth unemployment were observed in Germany (8.1 per cent), Austria (9 per cent) and the Netherlands (9.7 per cent).
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