Unemployment across EU Continues to Rise in Dec
The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate registered in the euro zone in December reached 10.4%, compared to 10.0% in the last month of 2010 and unchanged from November 2011, the EU statistics office Eurostat said.
The unemployment rate among all EU members stood at 9.9% in December, up from 9.5% registered in the same month of the previous year.
Eurostat said that some 23.82 million men and women in the EU, of whom 16.47 million in the euro zone, were unemployed in December.
Among EU member states, unemployment was lowest in Austria, 4.1%, and the Netherlands, 4.9%, while the highest rate was registered in Spain, 22.9%. In Greece the jobless rate was 19.2%, as the latest available data for the Mediterranean country is for October.
Bulgaria's jobless rate rose to 11.2% in December, compared to 11.0% in the previous month, and 11.4% in the last month of 2010.
Unemployment in Cyprus stood at 9.3% in December, up from 9.0% in the previous month and 3.2 percentage points higher than the same month last year.