SAWT BEIRUT INTERNATIONAL

| 10 October 2024, Thursday |

Eurozone unemployment drops to all-time low; post pandemic recovery slowed by global headwinds

EU’s Eurostat statistics office said on Thursday, that unemployment levels hit a record low in the eurozone, at 6.5 percent in OctoberThe figure, which was the lowest since Eurostat began tracking unemployment rates in April 1998, showed that the 19 EU nations that use the currency, Euro had recovered economically from the Covid pandemic. Compared to the 7.3 per cent recorded a year ago, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was significantly lower.

In October, 12.95 million or six per cent of the working-age population in the 27-nation European Union, were reported to be unemployed, with 10.87 million of them living in the eurozone itself.

While all The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies, with the exception of Britain, a former member of the EU, have recovered to their pre-pandemic size, the recovery is being slowed down by global headwinds. The European Commission predicts that the eurozone will enter a recession in the next weeks.
Despite declining in the most recent report on Wednesday, inflation is still running high at 10 per cent, which is more than the ECB’s goal rate of two per cent. This is partly due to rising energy prices sparked by the consequences of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

According to a Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) survey released by S&P Global, business activity has been dropping for five months in a row, however the rate of decline moderated in November. As per Eurostat, young people had the highest unemployment rates in the EU and its eurozone, at 15.1 per cent and 15.0 percent, respectively. Germany, which has the largest economy in the eurozone, had an unemployment rate of 3.0 percent, down from 3.3 percent in October 2021. It decreased from 7.6 percent a year earlier to 7.1 percent in France, the second-largest economy.

    Source:
  • Wions