Eurozone unemployment rate falls to record low

Unemployment across the eurozone has fallen to a new record low, a week before Europeans head to the polls for the European Parliament elections.

Statistics body Eurostat reports that the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate across the euro area fell to 6.4% in April, down from 6.5% in March. That’s the lowest since the single currency was created, Eurostat data shows.

In the wider EU, the jobless rate remained at 6%.

This suggests that the higher interest rates imposed by the European Central Bank to fight inflation is not hurting the labour market.

Eurostat estimates that 13.149 million persons in the EU, of whom 10.998 million in the euro area, were unemployed in April, adding:

• Compared with March 2024, unemployment decreased by 103 thousand in the EU and by 100 thousand in the euro area.
• Compared with April 2023, unemployment increased by 95 thousand in the EU and decreased by 101 thousand in the euro area.

Across the EU, unemployment was highest in Spain (at 11.7%) and Greece (10.8%) in April, and lowest in Czechia (2.7%) and Poland (3%).

At its peak, during the eurozone crisis in 2013, eurozone unemployment rose over 12%, but then fell steadily – before a brief spike in the Covid-19 pandemic.