Social

Home page

Social

Eurozone unemployment ends 2011 at record high of 10%

01 February 2012 13:16 (UTC +04:00)

Baku - APA-Economics. Unemployment across the 17 countries that use the euro ended 2011 at record high, official figures showed, a day after EU leaders acknowledged they would have to boost economic growth with the same urgency that they had shown in combating their nationsâ€™ debts.

Eurostat, the EUâ€™s statistics office, yesterday said the 10.4 percent unemployment rate in December was unchanged at its highest level since the euro was launched in 1999, as Novemberâ€™s was revised upward from a previous estimate of 10.3 percent.

Unemployment has been steadily rising over the past year in December 2010, it stood at 10 percent largely because of Europeâ€™s debt crisis, and compares badly with the US, where unemployment stands at 8.5 percent.

There are huge disparities across the eurozone, however, with those countries at the front line of Europeâ€™s current financial turmoil, such as Greece and Spain, suffering record rates of unemployment that are stoking concerns about the social fabric of their societies. Spainâ€™s unemployment stands at a staggering 22.9 per cent and Greeceâ€˜s is not far behind at 19.2 percent. At the other end of the scale, some countries like Austria are operating not far off what is considered to be the natural rate of unemployment in an economy of 4.1 percent, while Germanyâ€™s rate at a post-unification low of 5.5 percent.

Since Europeâ€™s debt crisis exploded around two years ago, the focus has been on austerity, with governments getting their houses in order with big, often-savage spending cuts, and tax increases.