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Europe loses almost a million jobs in 2011

Date: Tuesday 31 Jan 2012

Europe loses almost a million jobs in 2011

The Eurozone unemployment rate stood at 10.4% in December, according to the latest data from Eurostat. The reading is in line with the market consensus estimate.

The previous month's reading was revised higher to 10.4% from 10.3%. In December of 2010, the unemployment rate was at 10.0%.

Eurostat estimates that 23.816m men and women were without a job in the European Union (EU-27) in December 2011, 16.469m of which were in the Eurozone.

Since November, the number of unemployed persons increased by 24,000 in the EU-27 and 20,000 in the Eurozone. Since December 2010, unemployment has risen by 923,000 in the EU-27 and 751,000 in the Eurozone.

Looking at Eurozone members, the lowest unemployment rates were for Austria (4.1%), Holland (4.9%), and Luxembourg (5.2%) and the highest were for Spain (22.9%), Ireland (14.5%), and Portugal (13.6%). For the other large economies: Germany’s jobless rate stood at 5.5%; France at 9.9%; and Italy at 8.9%.

Outside the Eurozone, the unemployment rate for December of 2011 was 8.5% in the United States, 4.6% in Japan, and 8.4% in the United Kingdom.

According to analysts at Digital Look, “the European economy destroyed almost a million jobs in 2011. This is obviously a very negative reading. Even worse is that the 2012 outlook is not any brighter. The region is expected to dip back into recession, including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.”

“The periphery economies (Spain, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal) continue to show very poor unemployment levels. Spain produces one out of every three unemployed persons in the Eurozone,” they said.

FM

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