Unemployment in Euro Zone Reaches a Record High

Unemployment in the euro zone rose to yet another record high in the first two months of the year, official data showed Tuesday, providing confirmation that the economy remains in a deep freeze.

The jobless rate reached 12 percent in both January and February, the highest since the creation of the euro in 1999, Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, reported from Luxembourg. The January jobless rate for the 17-nation currency union was revised upward from the previously reported 11.9 percent.

For the overall European Union, the February jobless rate rose to 10.9 percent from 10.8 percent in January, Eurostat said, with more than 26 million people without work across the 27-nation bloc.

European officials continue to hold out hope that the economy, which continued to shrink in the first quarter of 2013, will begin turning around in the second half of the year. Many private sector forecasters are more pessimistic, expecting a contraction of as much as 2 percent in the euro zone’s gross domestic product this year, after a 0.9 percent contraction last year. Read more >>

Euro-Area Unemployment Climbs to Record

The euro-area jobless rate rose to a record in January as austerity measures taken to counter the debt crisis deepened the currency bloc’s recession.

Unemployment in the 17-nation euro area rose to 11.9 percent from a revised 11.8 percent in December, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995. The figure is higher than the 11.8 percent median estimate of 33 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.

“The situation is very serious,” said Alexander Krueger, chief economist at Bankhaus Lampe in Dusseldorf. “There’s no support any more from Germany. It’s more or less a sideways movement which I expect to continue. Other economies like Italy, Spain and Portugal are very bad at the moment, so in the end the unemployment rate can only climb.”

The euro-area economy recorded its worst performance in four years in the fourth quarter with a contraction of 0.6 percent. Gross domestic product will decline again in the first three months before returning to growth in the second quarter, according to the median of 21 economists’ estimates in a separate Bloomberg survey. The European Commission forecasts unemployment rates of 12.2 percent and 12.1 percent for this year and next. Read more >>

Eurozone crisis: Unemployment rate hits new record high

The eurozone unemployment rate has hit a new record high of 11.8% in November, up from October's 11.7%. Eurostat reported that there are now 18.820 million people out of work in the euro area.

The wider EU unemployment rate remained at 10.7%,with 26.061m million men and women out of work. The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5%), Luxembourg (5.1%), Germany (5.4%) and the Netherlands (5.6%).

Again, the highest rates were seen in Spain (26.6%). (In Greece, the most recent data shows a 26.0% rate in September 2012). Read more >>