Eurozone unemployment tops 12 per cent after crisis in Cyprus

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said the rate in February was unchanged at the record high after January’s figure was revised up to 12 per cent from 11.9 per cent. Spain and Greece have mass unemployment and many other countries are seeing their numbers swell to uncomfortably high levels.

A total of 19.07 million people were officially out of work in the eurozone in February, nearly two million more than the same month the year before. For the 27-country EU the unemployment rate was 10.9 per cent.

“Such unacceptably high levels of unemployment are a tragedy for Europe and a signal of how serious a crisis some eurozone countries are now in,” said EU Employment Commissioner Laszlo Andor.

Even though the eurozone has achieved another disappointing record, for the positively-inclined there was some comfort to be found.

The 33,000 increase in the number of unemployed in February was the smallest monthly rise since April 2011 and way down on the 222,000 recorded in January. And Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has an unemployment rate of only 5.4 per cent. That’s even better than the US rate of 7.7 per cent.

However, the February figures came before the recent Cyprus crisis. The worry in the markets is that the chaos surrounding the country’s bailout has reignited concerns over the euro and may have further dented confidence across the eurozone – a backdrop hardly conducive to job creation and economic recovery.

Certainly not in Cyprus, where unemployment is expected to climb as the economy contracts sharply.

Many economists are forecasting that the Cypriot economy will shrink 10 per cent this year alone and see unemployment rise to Greek and Spanish levels. In February, Cyprus’ unemployment stood at 14 per cent, compared to Spain’s 26.3 per cent.

Greece, which is in its sixth year of a savage recession, had an unemployment rate of 26.4 per cent in December. Its figures are compiled on a different time- frame and the actual rate in February will probably be even higher.

Meanwhile, the number of people registered as unemployed in Spain edged down by a little under 5,000 in March, the first reduction for the month in five years, official figures revealed yesterday.

The Labour Ministry said the decline showed that the government’s policies are working.