Eurostat figures released on Friday place Greece at the top of the unemployment table within the Eurozone as well as the European Union.
Greece’s figures, which take into account data available until the month of July, show a 25% seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, which translates to 1,197,000 people without a job. Spain, with an unemployment rate of 21.1% in September, is the only other EU country with more than a fifth of its population unemployed. Cyprus had the EU’s third highest unemployment rate with 15.1% in September.
The Eurozone‘s average unemployment rate is still higher than the European Union’s average unemployment rate. By September 2015 the unemployment rate for the monetary union was 10.8% while the EU had a 9.3% average unemployment rate.
Young people in Greece are also faced with the highest jobless rates. 48.6% of people between the ages of 15 and 25 who have been looking for a job within the past four weeks prior to July’s report, did not have one. That amounts to 139,000 people. Spain is a close second with an under-25 unemployment rate of 47.7%. The Eurozone’s average youth unemployment was 22.1% for September 2015 while the EU’s was 20.1% for the same month.
The figures also reveal a significant disparity between unemployment in eligible females and males in Greece. While 21.5% of eligible males were registered as not having a job, 29.4% of eligible females were unemployed in July. The gap in Greece does not reflect the extent of either the Eurozone’s or the EU’s gap, as there is a 0.2% higher unemployment rate for females in countries in the Eurozone and a 0.1% higher rate for females in countries in the EU.
source:greece.greekreporter.com, Anastassios Adamopoulos – Oct 30, 2015
