Brussels, Feb 1 (EFE) .- Spain achieved the second largest drop in unemployment in the entire European Union (EU) between December 2020 and 2021, but ranked as the country with the highest unemployment rate in the Twenty-seven, according to the data published this Tuesday by the community statistics office, Eurostat.
The unemployment rate in Spain registered a decrease of 3.3 points between December 2020 and the same month of 2021, from 16.3% to 13%, a year-on-year drop only surpassed by Lithuania.
In the eurozone, unemployment stood at 7% in December 2021, one tenth below the figure recorded in November, while in the EU as a whole it also decreased one tenth, to 6.4%.
Compared to the data communicated on January 10, Eurostat today revised the unemployment rate for the euro area for November, from 7.2% announced at first to 7.1%.
The 7% in the eurozone in December represents the lowest unemployment rate since at least April 1998, when the Eurostat database begins to reflect unemployment among the members of the single currency.
If the year-on-year comparison is made, unemployment in the Twenty-seven between December 2020 and 2021 fell by 1.1 percentage points, while in the nineteen countries that share the single currency the decline was 1.2 points.
Eurostat estimates that 13.61 million people were out of work in December in the EU, of which 11.48 million were in the eurozone.
Compared to November last year, the number of unemployed decreased by 210,000 individuals in the Union and by 185,000 in the single currency area.
Compared to December 2020, the number of unemployed fell by 2.19 million people in the Twenty-seven and by 1.82 million in the nineteen euro countries.
By country, the largest monthly decreases in unemployment between November and December occurred in Greece (0.6 points less, from 13.3% in November to 12.7% in December), Spain (0.4 points, from 13, 4% to 13%), Lithuania (0.4 points, from 6% to 5.6%) and Portugal (0.4 points, from 6.3% to 5.9%).
In year-on-year terms, the reductions in unemployment were led by Lithuania (down 3.6 percentage points, from 9.2% to 5.6%), followed by Spain (3.3 points, from 16.3% to 13%), Greece (2.9 points less, from 15.6% to 12.7%), Estonia (2 points, from 7.2% to 5.2%) and Austria (2 points, from 6.9% to 4, 9%).
Regarding unemployment among those under twenty-five years of age, in the euro area it went from 15.4% in November 2021 to 14.9% in December, while in the European Union it fell from 15.3% to 14 .9%.
If the data for December 2020 and 2021 are compared, youth unemployment fell 3.3 points in the nineteen euro countries and 3 points in the community club.
In December last year, 2.74 million people under the age of twenty-five did not have a job in the Twenty-seven, of which 2.22 million were in the euro area.
Spain was once again the Member State with the highest youth unemployment rate among the countries for which Eurostat published data, since the indicator stood at 30.6% in the last month of last year.
However, it fell 10.4 percentage points compared to December 2020 and 0.6 points compared to November 2021.
By sex, unemployment among women in the EU in December last year was 6.6%, down from 6.8% in November and 7.8% in the last month of 2020.
Among men, it was 6.1% at the end of 2021, down from 6.2% in November last year and 7.2% in December 2020.
As far as the eurozone is concerned, the unemployment rate for women was 7.3% in December 2021, two tenths less than in November and also below the 8.6% recorded in the last month of 2020.
As for men, the indicator stood at 6.7% in December, one tenth less than in November and 1.2 points less than in the last month of 2020.
Spain was once again one of the Member States with the largest unemployment gap among men (11.5% in December last year, compared to 11.8% in November and 14.3% in the last month of 2020) and women (14.7% in December 2021, compared to 15.1% in November and 18.5% in the last month of 2020).
The community statistics office explained that the data published this Tuesday is based on the criteria followed by the International Labor Organization, according to which an unemployed person is an individual without work who has actively sought a job in the last four weeks. and can start working in the next two weeks.
(c) EFE Agency