Eurozone jobless rate edges lower

Eurozone unemployment continued to edge lower in March, official data showed on Tuesday.

According to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 6.8% in March, down on February’s rate of 6.9% and 8.2% in March 2021. Analysts had widely forecast a decline, to 6.7%.

Across the wider bloc, the rate was 6.2%, down on February’s 6.3% and March’s rate of 7.5%.

Compared with February 2022, the number of people unemployed fell by 85,000 in the EU and by 76,000 in the Eurozone.

Among individual countries, Germany’s rate eased 0.1 percentage point to 2.9%, while the rate edged higher in Spain, to 13.5% from 13.4% in February. France’s unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.5%, and was 8.3% in Italy, compared to 8.5% a month previously.

A total of 2.579m young people - defined as being under 25 years old - were unemployed in the EU, 2.098m of which were in the Eurozone.