EU unemployment rate unchanged at 10 percent

EU unemployment rate unchanged at 10 percent

2011-09-01 20:27:36 GMT+7 (ICT)

BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- The European Union (EU) has announced that the euro area's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 10 percent in July, compared to the previous month.

The unemployment rate however represents a 2 percent decrease on a year-to-year basis, as the euro area had a 10.2 percent rate in July 2010. In the wider 27-nation EU region, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent in July, also unchanged compared with June, but 2 percent less than the 9.7 percent recorded in July 2010.

The EU's statistical office, Eurostat, estimated that 22.7 million men and women in the EU region were unemployed, of whom 15.75 million were in the euro area. Compared with June, the number of persons unemployed increased by 18,000 in the EU and by 61,000 in the euro area. Compared with July 2010, unemployment decreased by 451,000 and 247,000 in the EU and in the euro area, respectively.

Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (3.7 percent), the Netherlands (4.3 percent) and Luxembourg (4.6 percent), and the highest in Spain (21.2 percent), Latvia (16.2 percent in the first quarter of the year) and Lithuania (15.6 percent in the second quarter of the year).

Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in sixteen Member States and increased in eleven. The largest falls were observed in Estonia (17.9 percent to 12.8 percent between the second quarters of 2010 and 2011), Latvia (19.9 percent to 16.2 percent between the first quarters of 2010 and 2011) and Lithuania (18.2 percent to 15.6 percent between the second quarters of 2010 and 2011).

Meanwhile, the highest increases were registered in Greece (11 percent to 15 percent between the first quarters of 2010 and 2011), Bulgaria (10 percent to 11.5 percent) and Slovenia (7.2 percent to 8.4 percent).

The unemployment rate in the U.S. was 9.1 percent in July, while Japan recorded a jobless rate of 4.6 percent in June.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-09-01