Eurostat published a new paper about unemployment in the European Union, and in the Euro Area as well. The data is seasonally adjusted, so factors like the role of tourism in summer is negligible.

Eurostat found out, that the unemployment rate in the European Union (EU28) was down at 7.7 percent in June, in the Euro area (EA19) at 9.1 percent. Those numbers have now decreased again, since the rises of unemployment due to the financial crisis in 2007, when the unemployment rate in both viewed areas increased significantly to ca. 9.6 percent (EU28) and ca. 10.4 (EA19). After the European debt crisis in 2010, it continued rising to 11 percent (EU28) with its peak in 2013, whereas the unemployment rate in the Euro area even grew up to over 12 percent. Mediterranean countries like Italy, Spain, or Greece, still have higher numbers than the European Union average. In March 2017, 22 percent of all Greeks was unemployed, almost twice the number of unemployed Italians that month, and almost three times the EU28 average (7.9 percent). The Czech Republic (2.9 percent), Germany (3.9 percent), and Malta (4.1 percent) are among the countries with the lowest unemployment rate, surprisingly even below the Scandinavians with Sweden (6.6), or Finland (8.7 percent).

Youth unemployment is still an important issue, that has to dealt with by European politicians. In this statistics, youth unemployment is defined as “the number of people aged 15 to 24 unemployed as a percentage of the labour force of the same age” (Eurostat report, p. 2). In June 2017, 3.7 million young people in the EU28 were unemployed, which is a ratio of 16.7 percent. In Spain, the youth unemployment rate was 39.2 percent, which means, that four out of ten Spanish people under 25 was without a job. And again, the percentage in Greece 45.7 percent was the highest compared to other countries in March 2017. It is also noticeable, that compared to June 2016, the number in Greece did barely decrease. Whereas the numbers dropped in the European Union and the Euro are by almost two percent, in Italy by three percent points, in Croatia by almost four, and in Spain even by five percentage points, the youth unemployment rate in Greece only decreased only by 0.8 percent during the last year.