Lastest EU and Eurozone Unemployment Figures Out

 

January's combined unemployment rate for the 17 Eurozone member states was 9.9%, compared with 10.0% in December 2010 and 10.0% in January 2010.

The unemployment rate for the 27 member states of the European Union stood at 9.5% for the same period, compared with 9.6% for December and 9.5% in January 2010.

Estimates by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, put 23.048 million men and women in the EU (of which 15.775 million fall within the Eurozone) , as being unemployed as of January 2011. This compares with December 2010 when the number of unemployed fell by 43,000 in the EU and by 72,000 in the Eurozone.

In January 2010 unemployment increased by 99,000 in the EU and remained relitively unchanged in the Eurozone.

Of all 27 of the EU Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were seen in the Netherlands and Austria (both 4.3%) and Luxembourg (4.7%), with the highest figure coming form Spain (20.4%) and Latvia (18.3%).

When the figures for Jan 2011 are compared to Jan 2010, the unemployment rate dropped in 11 of the Member States, remained stable in 2 and increased in 14. The largest falls were observed in Estonia (16.1% to 14.3%), Malta (7.2% to 6.1%) and Sweden (8.9% to 7.9%), and the highest increases were registered in Greece (9.7% to 12.9%), Hungary (11.0% to 12.6%) and Lithuania (15.9% to 17.4%).

The Unemployment rate for males for fell from 9.9% to 9.8% in the Eurozone and from 9.7% to 9.6% in the EU for Jan 2010 - Jan 2011, whilst the female unemployment rate increased from 10.0% to 10.1% in the Eurozone and from 9.3% to 9.5% in the EU.

The under-25 unemployment figure stood at 19.9% in the Eurozone and at 20.6% in the EU, a slight improvement on last year's figures of 20.2% and 20.7% respectively. The lowest rates were observed in the Netherlands (7.8%) and the highest in Spain (43.1%).

As a comparison, the unemployment rate stood at 9.0% in the USA and 4.9% in Japan.