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The Euro area April 2010 unemployment rate was 10.1%, up 0.1% from 10% in March and up 0.9% from a year ago.
This is the highest number recorded in the Euro area since August 1998.
The EU27 country unemployment rate reached 9.7% in April 2010, unchanged from the previous month and up from 8.7% in April 2009.
In comparison to March 2010, the number of people unemployment rose 25,000 in both the Euro area and the EU27.
Compared to a year ago the number of unemployed people increased 2.4 million.
The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Netherlands (4.1%) and Austria (4.9%), while the highest rates were in Latvia (22.5%), Spain (19.7%) and Estonia (19.0% in the first quarter of 2010).
Compared to a year ago Germany was the only country to record a decrease in the unemployment rate to 7.1% from 7.6%. Although this is a positive development too much should not be read into it as at the end of March 693,000 people still benefitted from kurzarbeit without which they would have unemployed.
Small increases were seen in Luxembourg (5.3% to 5.4%) and Malta (6.9% to 7.0%).
The highest increases were registered in Estonia (11.0% to 19.0% between the first quarters of 2009 and 2010), Latvia (15.4% to 22.5%) and Lithuania (11.2% to 17.4% between the first quarters of 2009 and 2010).
The Euro area has finally overtaken the USA (9.9%) in terms of unemployment and seems to be working itself higher still.
The last update available for Greece is December 2009. I am sure the next quarterly number will not look good at all.
Source: Eurostat
Definitions:
The euro area (EA16) consists of Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland.
The EU27 includes Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK).
Tim du Toit is the editor of Eurosharelab.
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