The unemployment rate across the 17 European countries that use the euro has hit a record 12.2 percent in April, and the number of unemployed is on track to reach 20 million by year’s end, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said on Friday.
The worsening jobs crisis points to the recession that has gripped the euro alliance. Many countries are struggling to stimulate growth, while grappling with a debt crisis that has led governments to slash spending and raise taxes. Unemployment in the eurozone rose in April from the previous record of 12.1 percent set in March. In 2008, before the worst of the financial crisis, the rate was far less – around 7.5 percent. The number of unemployed rose 95,000 to 19.38 million. The currency bloc’s population is about 330 million. The unemployment rate for the overall eurozone masks sharp disparities among individual countries. Unemployment in Greece and Spain top 25 percent. In Germany, the rate is a low 5.4 percent.
The differences are particularly stark for youth unemployment. More than half of people ages 16 to 25 in Greece and Spain are unemployed. In Italy, the rate for this group tops 40 percent. For Germany, it’s just 7.5 percent. The disparities reflect the varying performances of the euro economies. Greece is in its sixth year of a savage recession. Germany’s economy has until recently been growing at a healthy pace. A key factor behind Europe’s economic decline has been a broad focus on paring debt by raising taxes and slashing spending. As long as many governments continue to cut spending and the confidence of consumers and businesses remains low, economists don’t expect any meaningful recovery in coming months.
Most Romanian jobless are men
The unemployment rate, in seasonally adjusted form, was 7.3 pc in April in Romania, up 0.1 pc against the previous month and also April 2012, with the number of jobless reaching 712,000, the National Statistics Institute (INS) announced Friday.
The number of unemployed persons (aged between 15-74) was estimated in April at 712,000, higher than the previous month (705,000) and also the similar interval of 2012 (711,000).
“On gender basis, the unemployment rate of men exceeds by 1.1 percent points that of women (the respective values being 7.8 pc for men and 6.7 pc for women), the INS mentioned.
In the case of adults (25-74), the unemployment rate was estimated at 5.9 pc for April, respectively 6.5 pc in the case of men and 5.2 pc of women. The number of jobless aged 25-74 represents 75 pc of the total number of unemployed persons estimated for the end of April 2013.
