(CN) — Unemployment in the eurozone remained stable in February at 6.5%, even as annual inflation was expected to tick downward from 2.6% to 2.4%, according to a pair of reports released Wednesday by Eurostat, a statistics agency of the European Union.
Although the agency reported some 13.2 million eligible workers remain unemployed, February’s rate reflects the lowest rate in at least 12 years of record-keeping.
Unemployment peaked in the EU at 12.2% in June 2013 before steadily falling to 7.2% in April 2020, just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. It then reached a five-year high of 8.2% in September 2020 before failing again in the second quarter of 2021.
According to Eurostat, the unemployment rate is significantly higher among youth, representing 14.6% of workers under the age of 25. Between the sexes, women of all ages were more likely to be unemployed than men by a margin of 0.8%.
Spain and Greece led the region with unemployment rates of 11.5% and 11%, respectively, while Czechia and Poland enjoyed the lowest rates of 2.6% and 2.9%, respectively. Below average rates were also recorded in Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Croatia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia.
Meanwhile, above average unemployment was recorded in Denmark, Estonia, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Finland and Sweden.
Not members of the eurozone but included in the report were Iceland, Norway and Switzerland; they last reported respective rates of 3.8%, 3.8% and 4.1% in December 2023.
Eurostat defines unemployed persons as those aged 15-74 who are without work, are available to start work within the next two weeks and have actively sought employment at some point over the past four weeks.
The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labor force.
In other positive news, inflation in the eurozone was expected to clock in at 2.4% for the month of March 2024, down from 2.6% one month earlier. Services remain the largest contributor to annual inflation and maintained a rate of 4%, but food, alcohol and tobacco fell from 3.9% in February to 2.7% in March.
The inflation rate for non-energy industrial goods fell 0.5% from February to March, while the inflation rate for energy increased to -1.8% in March from -3.7% in February.
The annual inflation rate remains above 4% in Estonia, Croatia and Austria, while it remains above average in Belgium, Greece, Spain, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia. Lithuania has the region’s lowest annual inflation rate at 0.3%, while Germany, Irelands, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia and Finland are also below average.
In the United States, an unemployment rate of 3.9% was recorded in February 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the inflation rate was 3.15%.
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