Eurozone unemployment drops to record low

Unemployment in the eurozone has dropped to a record low, at 6.5 per cent in October, the EU's Eurostat statistics office said Thursday.

The reading -- the lowest since Eurostat started compiling jobless figures in April 1998 -- was an indicator that the economies of the 19 EU nations using the euro had bounced back after the Covid pandemic.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was markedly less than the 7.3 percent recorded a year ago.

Eurostat estimated that, for the entire 27-nation European Union, 12.95 million adults were unemployed in October - or 6.0 percent of the active population - with 10.87 million of them in the eurozone.

While all OECD economies, with the exception of former EU member Britain, have recovered to their pre-pandemic size, global headwinds are stealing the wind out of the sails of the recovery.

The eurozone is likely to tip into recession within weeks, according to the European Commission.

Inflation is running hot, despite falling back in the latest reading on Wednesday, at 10 per cent - above the European Central Bank's two-per cent target - largely because of high energy prices spurred by the fallout of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Business activity has been declining for five straight months, according to a PMI survey published by S&P Global, although the rate of decline slowed in November.

Younger people had the highest unemployment rate in the EU and its eurozone, at 15.1 per cent and 15.0 per cent respectively, according to Eurostat. That was an increase over a year ago.

In the eurozone's biggest economy, Germany, the unemployment rate was 3.0 per cent, down from 3.3 per cent in October 2021.

In the second biggest, France, it was 7.1 per cent, down fro 7.6 per cent a year earlier.

The Czech Republic, which is not in the eurozone, had the lowest unemployment rate in the EU, at 2.1 per cent, while eurozone member Spain was the highest, with 12.5 per cent.

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