Brussels, 13/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - The unemployment rate reached a new high of 10.1% in the EU in January 2012, with almost 24.3 million people unemployed, an average increase of 200,000 per month over the last six months, the European Commission announced in the Labour Market Fact Sheet for March 2012. Since March 2011, more than 1.6 million people have lost their jobs. There are, however, differences from one labour market to another: while unemployment figures have fallen slightly in six member states (Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Finland, Lithuania and Latvia), the EU's largest countries have not been spared: Italy has recorded 173,000 more unemployed, Spain (+126,000), France (+73,000), the United Kingdom (+26,000) and, to a lesser extend, Germany (+12,000). In Germany, where unemployment rates have fallen steadily over the last two years, there was a slight increase in January 2012, taking unemployment to 5.8%. As in the 2009 unemployment surge, the present rise has hit men harder than women, causing the gender gap to disappear since men make up 61% of the 1.6 million additional unemployed in the EU since March 2011, and women 39%. The EU youth unemployment rate reached the record high of 22.4% in January 2012, with rates of around 20% in two thirds of member states and almost 50% in Greece and Spain. However, despite the current backdrop of economic uncertainty, employment expectations among EU firms remain broadly optimistic. European consumers, on the other hand, expect the labour market situation to worsen. (SD/transl.rt)