Eurozone unemployment rate falls to decade low in November
The eurozone unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 10 years in November, according to figures released by Eurostat on Wednesday.
The unemployment rate fell to 7.9% from a downwardly-revised 8% in October and 8.7% in November 2017. This marks the lowest recorded rate for the bloc since October 2008 and beat expectations for a rate of 8.1%.
In the EU's 28 member states, the unemployment rate came in at 6.7% in November, stable compared to October and down from 7.3% in November 2017, remaining at the lowest rate recorded in the EU28 since the start of the EU monthly unemployment series in January 2000.
Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: "This is a great headline, but we fear that the positive momentum - unemployment fell 0.7 percentage points between January and November - won’t be sustained in the first half of 2019 given the increasing evidence of the sharp slowdown in GDP growth, in the second half of last year.
"Small declines in Spanish and Italian unemployment, to 14.7% and 10.7% respectively, were the main drivers of the headline dip, while joblessness was unchanged in France and Germany, at 8.9% and 3.3%, respectively. That said, unemployment also fell in the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia and Finland."