EU’s statistical office Eurostat released June 2013 unemployment rates: euro area – 12.1%, EU27 – 10.9%

31-7-2013 — /EuropaWire/ — The euro area1 (EA17) seasonally-adjusted2 unemployment rate3 was 12.1% in June 2013, stable compared with May4. The EU271 unemployment rate was 10.9%, down from 11.0% in May4. In both zones, rates have risen compared with June 2012, when they were 11.4% and 10.5% respectively. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Eurostat estimates that 26.424 million men and women in the EU27, of whom 19.266 million were in the euro area, were unemployed in June 2013. Compared with May 2013, the number of persons unemployed decreased by 32 000 in the EU27 and by 24 000 in the euro area. Compared with June 2012, unemployment rose by 1.080 million in the EU27 and by 1.129 million in the euro area.

Member States

Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.6%), Germany (5.4%) and Luxembourg (5.7%), and the highest in Greece (26.9% in April 2013) and Spain (26.3%).

Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate increased in seventeen Member States and fell in ten. The highest increases were registered inCyprus (11.7% to 17.3%), Greece (23.1% to 26.9% between April 2012 and April 2013) and Slovenia (8.8% to 11.2%). The largest decreases were observed in Latvia (15.5% to 12.5% between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013) and Estonia (10.1% to 8.0% between May 2012 and May 2013).

In June 2013, the unemployment rate in the United States was 7.6%, stable compared with May and down from 8.2% in June 2012.

Youth unemployment

In June 2013, 5.512 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU27, of whom 3.526 million were in the euro area. Compared with June 2012, youth unemployment decreased by 43 000 in the EU27 and increased by 43 000 in the euro area. In June 2013, the youth unemployment rate5 was 23.2% in the EU27 and 23.9% in the euro area, compared with 22.8% and 23.0% respectively in June 2012. In June 2013, the lowest rates were observed in Germany (7.5%), Austria (9.3%) the Netherlands (11.0%) and Malta (11.2%), and the highest in Greece(58.7% in April 2013) and Spain (56.1%).

  1. The euro area (EA17) consists of Belgium, Germany, Estonia, 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). From 1 July 2013 the European Union (EU28) also includes Croatia (HR).

As part of Eurostat’s guidelines for the dissemination of data when the EU is enlarged, the aggregate data series commented on in this News Release refer to the official composition of the EU in the most recent month for which data is available. Thus News Releases with data for months up to June 2013 will comment on EU27 series, while Releases with data for July 2013 onwards will comment on EU28 series.

Eurostat’s guidelines can be found on the Eurostat website:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/GUIDE_ENLARG_2007/EN/GUIDE_ENLARG_2007-EN.PDF

The tables also include Iceland (IS), Norway (NO) and the United States (US).

  1. Non-seasonally adjusted and trend data can be found in the statistical database on the Eurostat website. For further details please refer to the Unemployment statistics article in Statistics Explained:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics

  1. Eurostat produces harmonised unemployment rates for individual EU Member States, the euro area and the EU. These unemployment rates are based on the definition recommended by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The measurement is based on a harmonised source, the European Union Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Based on the ILO definition, Eurostat defines unemployed persons as persons aged 15 to 74 who:

– are without work;

– are available to start work within the next two weeks;

– and have actively sought employment at some time during the previous four weeks.

The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force. The labour force is the total number of people employed plus unemployed. In this news release unemployment rates are based on employment and unemployment data covering persons aged 15 to 74.

  1. The data in this News Release are normally subject to small revisions, caused by the updates to the seasonally adjusted series whenever new monthly data are added. Larger revisions can occur when the most recent LFS data are included in the calculation process. Compared with the rates published in News Release 102/2013 of 2 July 2013, the May 2013 unemployment rate has been revised from 12.2% to 12.1% for the EA17 and remains unchanged at 11.0% for the EU27. Among Member States, the rate has been revised by between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points for the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Finland. The rate has been revised downwards by 0.5 percentage points for Spain.
  2. The youth unemployment rate is the number of people aged 15 to 24 unemployed as a percentage of the labour force of the same age. Therefore, the youth unemployment rate should not be interpreted as the share of jobless people in the overall youth population. For further details please refer to the Youth unemployment article in Statistics Explained:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Youth_unemployment

  1. Latvia: quarterly data for all series.

Cyprus, Romania, Slovenia and Croatia: quarterly data for youth unemployment.

  1. For Germany, Austria, Finland and Iceland the trend component is used instead of the more volatile seasonally adjusted data.

Issued by: Eurostat Press Office

Tim ALLEN

Tel: +352-4301-33 444

eurostat-pressoffice@ec.europa.eu

Eurostat news releases on internet:

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat

For further information on data:

Nicola MASSARELLI

Tel: +352-4301-34 525

Hubertus VREESWIJK

Tel: +352-4301-34 323

estat-monthly-unemployment@ec.europa.eu

Selected Principal European Economic Indicators: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/euroindicators

EU Unemployment rate charts

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