Unemployment in the euro area decreased in February – TVI24

The unemployment rate in the euro area stood at 11.3% in February, according to data released Tuesday by Eurostat, which means both a retreat from the previous month as year on year.

In January this year, the unemployment rate of the 19 countries that share the euro area was 11.4%, according to the value now revised upwards by Eurostat (since the previous estimate pointed to 11.2%). Back in February 2014, unemployment reached 11.8% of the working population.

As for the total of 28 countries of the European Union, the unemployment rate stood at February this year at 9.8%, again in retreat both from the previous month (10.5%) as compared to the same period (9.9%).

On Monday, the National Statistics Institute (INE) also released data from unemployment to Portugal, having estimated that the rate was 14.1% in February, up 0.3 percentage points of that in January this year and less 0.8 percentage points over the same period.

Even as the data released today by the official office of the European Union statistics, between Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Germany (4.8%) and Austria (5, 3%) and the highest in Greece (26% figure for December 2014) and Spain (23.2%).

In the annual comparison, unemployment decreased in 22 countries, with the most significant decreases in Estonia (8.4% to 6.2% between January 2014 and January 2015), Ireland (12 1% to 9.9%) and Bulgaria (12.3% to 10.2%). Among the six countries that increased the rate of unemployment, especially Croatia (17.3% to 18.5%), Cyprus (from 15.6% to 16.3%) and Finland (8.4% to 9.1%).

As for the unemployment of young people under 25, the rate reached 22.9% in the euro area and 21.1% in the European Union, a decline compared to 24% and 22.9%, respectively in February last year.

In February this year there were thus 4,850 million young people under 25 unemployed, and 3.245 million were in the euro area.

The highest rates of youth unemployment are found in Greece (51.2% in December 2014), Spain (50.7%), Croatia (46.4% in the fourth quarter of 2014) and Italy (42.6%).

The lowest were observed in Germany (7.2%), Austria (9.0%) and Denmark (10.2%).

In Portugal, in February, the unemployment rate for young people stood at 35%, up 0.5 percentage points compared to January.