Brussels, 01/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - Regional variations are barely perceptible at times, but unemployment is continuing to decline in the eurozone and the EU as a whole. Unemployment was estimated on Friday 1 July to stand at 10.1% and 8.6% of the working population of the two zones, a fall of 0.1% between April and May in both cases.
In its latest estimates, the EU's statistical office, Eurostat, points out that this new fall takes the EU to its lowest levels of unemployment registered since July 2011 for the eurozone and March 2009 for the EU28. In May 2016, there were slightly over 21 million people looking for work, 16.2 million of them in a country sharing the single currency.
The variations in the member states between April and May were very slight. Only seven member states saw changes of or above 0.2%. among these, Spain (19.8% in May compared with 20.1% in April), Croatia (13.3% compared with 13.6%) and Cyprus (12% compared with 12.2%) confirm a well-anchored and relatively strong downwards trend. The situation is not so different in Lithuania (8% compared with 8.2%) and Malta (4.1% compared with 4.3%). The other two variations of note are increases in unemployment in Austria (6.1% compared with 5.9%) and Romania (6.6% compared with 6.4%).
Unemployment among under-25-year-olds follows the same trend, falling in the eurozone by 0.2% in a month to 20.7% in May. It was 18.6% for the EU as a whole. Youth unemployment remains above 25% in six member states: Spain (43/9%), Italy (36.9%), Portugal (28.6%), Slovakia (25.3%), France (23.3%) and Finland (21.3%). (Original version in French by Jan Kordys)