Eurozone unemployment reaches new historic high
Euro-Area Unemployment Rate Rises to Record: Economy
The euro-area jobless rate climbed to a record in September as the fiscal crisis and tougher austerity measures threatened to deepen the economy’s slump.
Unemployment in the 17-nation region rose to 11.6 percent from 11.5 percent in August, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. That’s the highest since the data series started in 1995. The data also showed that youth unemployment is at 23.3 percent, with Spain’s rate more than double that, at 54.2 percent. A separate report showed inflation cooled to 2.5 percent in October from 2.6 percent.
The debt crisis has pushed at least five euro nations into recessions and eroded investor and business confidence, forcing companies to cut costs to help weather the turmoil. Economic confidence in the region fell in October, according to a report yesterday, while data today French consumer spending rose less than economists forecast in September.
“We’ve become more pessimistic,” said Christoph Weil, an economist at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “The euro-area economy will probably only return to growth in the second quarter of 2013. The situation on the labor market will continue to worsen, with the jobless rate increasing to 12 percent.”