BRUSSELS: Eurozone unemployment is back flirting with the 20-million mark, new data out yesterday showed, after what analysts said was a stark “revising away” of a tourism-led summer breather.
The key unemployment rate across the 17-country currency area hit a record 12.2 percent in September, with about 19.5 million people classed as jobless by European Union data agency Eurostat.
Nearly four million more people are on the jobless lines after the last two-and-a-half years of bailouts and recession amid debt-driven reforms.
Along with a sharp slide in inflation also announced yesterday — now just 0.7 percent — the data brought fresh pressure on the European Central Bank.
“The peak in unemployment could be reached this autumn,” said Christian Schulz, senior economist with Germany’s Berenberg bank, after “Eurostat revised away any evidence that unemployment had been stabilising over the summer due to a strong tourism season.”
The Eurostat figures presented September’s 12.2 percent as stable — but only because August’s rate had been revised up from 12.0 percent, with an extra 60,000 people listed on the dole. A cumulative drop of 34,000 claimed over the three preceding months in fact turned into an increase of 159,000, IHS Global Insight analyst Howard Archer pointed out.
Chronic youth unemployment left some 3.5 million people under the age of 25 listed as jobless.
The top German economy had the lowest rate in this category, of 7.7 percent. Twice bailed-out Greece and Spain with its burst property and banking bubble each recorded about 57 percent — with non-euro but recent EU entrant Croatia in similar territory.
AFP
