Eurozone: Unemployment rate remains steady in April

Conditions in the labor market in the common-currency bloc remained broadly steady in April according to recently released data by Eurostat. The number of unemployed persons fell by 63,000, which followed March’s decrease of 212,000 job seekers. The unemployment rate in April remained steady at March’s 10.2%, which represented the lowest since August 2011.

Looking at the countries in the region, drops in the unemployment rate were observed in the majority of the countries, with only three countries seeing a rise in the rate. However, notable divergences persist in the labor market among core Eurozone countries and those on the periphery. Greece is by far the economy in the Eurozone with the highest unemployment rate (24.2%, data refer to February), followed by Spain (20.1%) and Portugal (12.0%).

At the other end of the spectrum, Germany (4.2%), Malta (4.3%) and Austria (5.8%) registered the lowest unemployment rates in the Eurozone in April. Among the remaining major economies, Italy had the highest unemployment rate with 11.7%, followed by France with 9.9%.

In 2015 as a whole, unemployment in the Eurozone averaged 10.9%, which is the lowest average rate since 2012. FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast panelists expect the unemployment rate to average 9.9% in 2016, which is down 0.4 percentage points from last month’s forecast. For 2017, the panel expects the unemployment rate to average 9.5%.