Unemployment in the Euro area drops further

According to the European statistics office Eurostat, unemployment in the euro area fell to 6.8 percent in March, the lowest level ever recorded in the bloc of countries. For the European Union as a whole, it is 6.2 percent of the working population. The economic recovery from the coronary crisis has led to a sharp rise in the demand for staff.

Not only are the labour markets tight, but in some sectors there are outright shortages of suitable workers. In February, 6.9% of the working population in the euro area was still without work. In the EU, the figure was 6.3%.

11 million

Together, the euro countries still have more than 11 million unemployed. Greece and Spain are in the lead – they still have the highest unemployment rate in the bloc. Germany has the least unemployed in relative terms, according to Eurostat statistics. The country itself published figures for April earlier on Tuesday, but these showed that the decline is increasingly slow. In the Netherlands, 3.3 percent of the labour force were unemployed, as reported earlier by Statistics Netherlands.

Furthermore, Eurostat reports that almost 2.6 million young people up to 25 years of age in the European Union are without work. Of these, almost 2.1 million live in the eurozone. This means that almost 14 percent of young people in the euro area and the EU are on the sidelines.