Spain is still the unemployment leader in an EU with historically low unemployment.
The unemployment rate in the eurozone remained at 6.4% and 5.9% in the European Union (EU) as a whole in July, unchanged from June, thus remaining at an all-time low in the single currency club, the EU statistics office Eurostat reported on Thursday. Spain, with an overall unemployment rate of 11.7% and youth unemployment at 27.1%, almost double that of the EU, continues to lead, and by far, unemployment in Europe.
In year-on-year terms, unemployment fell by three tenths of a percentage point in the euro area, from 6.7 % in July last year, while in the EU-27 the fall was two tenths of a percentage point, from 6.1 % in the seventh month of 2022.
Eurostat estimated that 12.9 million people were out of work last July in the EU, of which 10.9 million were in the euro area.
Compared with June 2023, unemployment rose in July by 35,000 people in the EU and by 73,000 in the eurozone.
Compared with July last year, unemployment fell by 209,000 people in the EU-27 and by 264,000 in the countries of the single currency.
Spain, a country with the highest number of unemployed in Europe
In July, Spain was the EU Member State with the highest unemployment rate (11.6 %), although it fell by one tenth of a point compared with the figure for June of this year (11.7 %) and also fell by 1.1 points compared with the 12.7 % recorded in the seventh month of 2022.
After Spain, the EU countries with the highest unemployment rates last July were Greece (10.8 %), Italy (7.6 %), France (7.4 %), Sweden (7.3 %), Estonia (7.2 %) and Finland (7.1 %).
The lowest levels of unemployment, meanwhile, were found in Malta (2.5 %), the Czech Republic (2.7 %), Poland (2.8 %) and Germany (2.9 %).
Among the under 25s, unemployment remained at 13.8 % in the euro area in July compared with June, while in the European Union it fell by three tenths of a percentage point to 13.9 %.
According to the EU statistics office, 2.7 million people under the age of 25 were unemployed in the EU in July, of whom 2.2 million were in the euro area.
Compared with June 2023, youth unemployment fell by 58,000 people in the EU-27 and rose by 12,000 in the euro area.
Spain, also the leader in youth unemployment
Compared with July last year, the unemployment rate among those under twenty-five years of age fell by 85,000 individuals in the community club and by 80,000 in the single currency club.
Of all the Member States for which Eurostat published data today, Spain had the highest youth unemployment rate (27%), although it was down compared to June this year (27.1%) and July 2022 (30.3%).
Spain was followed by Greece (23.2 % last July), Italy (22.1 %) and Sweden (20.5 %).
By gender, the unemployment rate among women remained at 6.2 % in the EU in July, unchanged from June, while among men it also remained unchanged at 5.7 %.
In the euro area, unemployment among women rose by one tenth of a percentage point between June and July to 6.8 %. The same was true for men, with an increase of one tenth of a percentage point to 6.2 %.
As far as Spain is concerned, among men the indicator fell by one tenth of a percentage point between June and July, to 10.1 %. Among women, it went from 13.3 % to 13.2 %.
