The eurozone closes the year of the pandemic with an unemployment rate of 8.3%

The eurozone ended 2020, a year marked by the coronavirus pandemic, with an unemployment rate of 8.3%, as the figure remained unchanged in December compared to November, while in the European Union (EU) as a whole the indicator also remained stable at 7.5% during the last month of the year compared to the eleventh, according to the EU statistics office, Eurostat, on Monday.

In year-on-year terms, Spain recorded the second largest rise in unemployment among the EU countries for which Eurostat published data today, as the indicator grew by 2.5 percentage points compared to December 2019, a rise identical to that recorded in Ireland.

In the nineteen countries that share the single currency, unemployment rose by nine-tenths of a percentage point from 7.4% in December 2019, while in the EU-27 the rise was one percentage point from 6.5% twelve months earlier.

Eurostat estimated that 16 million men and women in the EU, of which 13.671 million were in the euro area, were out of work in December last year.
Compared with November 2020, the number grew by 67,000 in the EU-27 and by 55,000 in the common currency club. Compared with December 2019, the number of unemployed increased by 1.951 million workers in the EU and 1.516 million in the euro area.

By country, the largest year-on-year increases in December 2020 compared with the same month a year earlier were in Lithuania (up 3.7 percentage points to 10.1 %), Spain (up 2.5 points to 16.2 %) and Ireland (up 2.5 points to 7.2 %), Latvia (up 1.7 points to 8.2 %) and Austria (up 1.5 points to 5.8 %).

Compared on a monthly basis, the largest increase in unemployment between November and December 2020 was experienced in Austria (up 3 tenths of a percentage point to 5.8 %). In Spain, the indicator rose by one tenth of a percentage point to 16.2 %.

Youth unemployment rose by three percentage points between December 2019 and 2020 in both the euro area countries (to 18.5 %) and the EU as a whole (to 17.8 %), which meant a rise of 438,000 unemployed under-25s in the EU-27 and 353,000 in the euro area.

The monthly increases were four tenths of a percentage point in the euro area and three tenths of a percentage point in the EU. Compared with November 2020, youth unemployment rose in the last month of the year by 41,000 people in the Union and by 36,000 in the shared currency area.

Thus, last December, 3.138 million young people were unemployed in the community club, of whom 2.590 million resided in the euro area.

As far as Spain is concerned, youth unemployment rose by seven tenths of a percentage point between November and December, while in year-on-year terms the increase was 10.4 percentage points, reaching 40.7 % in the last month of last year, the highest figure among the countries for which Eurostat provided data on Monday.

By gender, the unemployment rate for women in the EU remained stable at 7.9 % in December compared to November, and the same was true for men, who remained at 7.1 %.

In the nineteen countries sharing the euro, the indicator for women remained unchanged at 8.8 %, but for men it increased by one tenth of a percentage point from 7.8 % in November to 7.9 % in December.

In year-on-year terms, unemployment among men rose by eight tenths of a percentage point in the euro area and the EU, while among women it rose by 1.1 percentage points in both areas.

Spain continues to be one of the Member States with the largest gender gap in unemployment, affecting 14.2 % of men and 18.4 % of women.

Eurostat explained that the data published on Monday are based on the criteria followed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), according to which an unemployed person is an individual without a job who has actively looked for a job in the last four weeks and can start working in the following two weeks.

He said the coronavirus pandemic and the measures put in place to deal with it have led to a "sharp increase in the number of claims for unemployment benefits" in the EU.

At the same time, "a significant proportion" of those who had registered for unemployment benefits were no longer actively seeking work or were unable to work if, for example, they had to look after their children.

This situation leads, according to Eurostat, to discrepancies between the number of unemployed registered at the unemployment offices and the number calculated according to the ILO definition.