Unemployment in the economy of the 17 nations using the euro reached a revised 11.2 percent in May and held at that level in June, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995. In Germany, unemployment climbed for a fourth straight month in July, a separate report showed.
EU data agency Eurostat said the seasonally-adjusted rate was the same as an upwardly-revised May toll but noted another 123,000 people lost their jobs going into the European summer, bringing the total to nearly 18m, more than 2m up on a year earlier.
Marking a 14th successive monthly rise, analysts noted a cumulative rise of 2.248m people since that series began in April last year, with London-based Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight warning that the unemployment rate "now looks odds-on" to cross 11.5pc by the end of the year, with "a very real danger" of reaching 12pc next year.
In Germany, the Federal Labour Agency said raw or unadjusted unemployment also rose sharply in July, with the total number of people out of work up by 66,800 on June at 2.88m.
Eurostat estimates that 25m men and women are unemployed across the full 27-state EU. Youth unemployment hit 22.6pc.
The figures appear to go against Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti's belief that there is light at the end of the tunnel of the eurozone debt crisis.
The euro was little changed after the report, trading at $1.2289 at 12:14 p.m. in Frankfurt. The single currency has lost about 7.4 percent against the dollar over the past three months, reflecting investor concern about a euro breakup.
Companies may continue to cut jobs as governments from Spain to Italy are seeking ways to plug their budget gaps. Euro- area economic confidence dropped more than economists forecast in July, with households the most pessimistic in almost three years, data showed yesterday. A gauge of manufacturers’ employment expectations declined from June.
The euro-area unemployment report was in line with the median forecast of 28 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The statistics office had previously reported a jobless rate of 10.1 percent for May.
The euro-area inflation rate remained at 2.4 percent in July, the same as in the previous two months, the EU’s statistics office said in an initial estimate today. It will release a breakdown of prices including core inflation, which excludes volatile costs such as energy, in August.
Europe’s debt crisis has also affected other parts of the world. Taiwan’s economy unexpectedly contracted in the second quarter from a year ago, South Korean output fell last month and a Japanese manufacturing gauge in July reached the lowest level since the wake of the 2011 earthquake, reports showed today.
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