Unemployment in Spain, where the community of international bankers is calling for even tougher budget measures by the government, has now reached 20.7% according to this morning’s figures from Eurostat. Not far behind come Latvia (19.4% in the second quarter of 2010) and Lithuania (18.4% in the third quarter of 2010).
Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Netherlands (4.4%), Austria (4.8%) and Luxembourg (5.0%).
- The euro area (EA16) consists of Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland.
- The EU27 includes Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE) and the United Kingdom (UK).
Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in eight Member States and increased in nineteen. The largest falls were observed in Germany (7.5% to 6.7%), Malta (6.9% to 6.2%), Sweden (8.8% to 8.1%) and Finland (8.7% to 8.0%). The highest increases were registered in Lithuania (14.4% to 18.4% between the third quarters of 2009 and 2010), Greece (9.2% to 12.2% between the second quarters of 2009 and 2010) and Latvia (16.5% to 19.4% between the second quarters of 2009 and 2010).
One Comment
I wonder if there is a correlation between the states with high unemployment – Spain, Ireland, Lithuania and Latvia and those that have had done the most deregulation.
At the other end, Luxembourg, Austria and Switzerland don’t come to mind as high growth (read high risk) economies – and open to large scale financial speculation.