Phuket Gazette: Euro area jobless rate unchanged

– World news selected by Gazette editors for Phuket’s international community

PHUKET: The euro area (EA17) unemployment rate remained at 11.2 per cent in June, unchanged when compared to the month of May, the European Union (EU) said yesterday.

According to Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, the unemployment rate increased by 1.2 per cent on a year-to-year basis, with the June 2011 rate at 10 per cent. Meanwhile, the wider 27-nation EU region (EU27) registered an unemployment rate of 10.4 per cent in June, also stable compared with May, while increasing by almost 1 per cent compared to last year’s 9.5 per cent in June 2011.

The report’s figures also estimated that 25 million men and women in the EU27, of whom 17.8 million were in the euro area, were unemployed in June. Compared with the previous month, the number of people unemployed increased by 127,000 in the EU27 and by 123,000 in the euro area.

Compared with June 2011, unemployment rose by 2.1 million in the EU27 and by 2 million in the euro area.

Among the EU’s Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5 per cent), the Netherlands (5.1 per cent), Germany and Luxembourg (both 5.4 per cent), and the highest in Spain (24.8 per cent) and Greece (22.5 per cent in April).

Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in seven EU Member States, increased in nineteen and remained stable in Sweden. The largest falls were observed in Estonia (13.6 percent to 10.9 per cent between the first quarters of 2011 and 2012), Latvia (17.1 per cent to 15.3 per cent between the first quarters of 2011 and 2012) and Lithuania (15.4 per cent to 13.7 per cent).

Outside the European Union, the unemployment rate was 8.2 per cent in the United States in June and 4.4 per cent in Japan in May.

— Phuket Gazette Editors

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