Regional unemployment highest in Spain

BRUSSELS - Over two-dozen regions throughout the Union have an unemployment rate twice the EU average.

The data, published on Wednesday (16 April), by the EU’s statistical office Eurostat, says the jobless rate in 27 regions in 2013 was higher than 21.6 percent.

Thirteen are found in Spain, 10 in Greece, three in the French Overseas Departments, and one in Italy.

Five of the worst affected are found in Spain alone.

At 36.3 percent, Spain’s Andalucia tops the overall unemployment regional figures, followed closely by Ceuta, Melilla, Canarias, and Extremadura.

Youth employment is worse.

Young people are twice as likely to be unemployed, when compared to the average unemployment rate, in more than three quarters of all the EU’s 272 regions.

Ceuta tops the list of youth unemployment with a 72.7 percentage, followed by Greece’s Dytiki Makedonia at 70.6 percent and Ipeiros at 67.0 percent.

The data also showed that over 47 percent of people without work have been unable to find a new job after a year.

The situation is the most severe in France’s Guadeloupe. Almost 80 percent of people without a job have been so for over a year, with Guyane coming in at a close second.

Around 75 percent of the unemployed in Slovakia’s Vychodne Slovensko region are also unable to find a job after a year.

At the other end of the spectrum are Germany, Austria and Sweden.

At 2.6 percent, Germany’s Oberbayern region had the overall lowest unemployment rate. Both Freiburg in Germany and Salzburg in Austria tied at 2.9 percent.

Oberbayern, along with Tubingen, also ranks as having the lowest youth unemployment rate at 4.4 percent with Freiburg coming in at a close second.

Long-term jobless rates are the lowest in six Swedish regions, which includes Stockholm.

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  Unemployment in the EU28 regions in 2013