Bulgarian unemployment stays above EU average in June
Unemployment in Bulgaria was 12.4 per cent in June, the European Union’s statistics bureau Eurostat said on July 31, rising by 0.2 percentage points during the month, while overall unemployment in the 27-state bloc remained unchanged at 10.4 per cent.
On an annual basis, Bulgarian unemployment rose by 1.2 percentage points, while the EU-wide figure increased by 0.9 percentage points compared to June 2011.
Official Bulgarian statistics by the Employment Agency, which only takes into account the number of people registered at unemployment bureaus, put unemployment at 10.8 per cent in June.
Unemployment in the 17 countries of the euro zone was 11.2 per cent, up from 10 per cent in June 2011.
Eurostat estimated that 25.11 million men and women in the EU, of whom 17.8 million were in the euro area, were unemployed in June 2012. Compared with May 2012, the numbers increased by 127 000 in the EU as a whole and by 123 000 in the euro area. Compared with June 2011, unemployment rose by 2.165 million in the EU and by 2.024 million in the euro area.
Among the member states, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.5 per cent), the Netherlands (5.1 per cent), Germany and Luxembourg (both 5.4 per cent), and the highest rates were in Spain (24.8 per cent) and Greece (22.5 per cent in April 2012).
(Illustration: Sergio Roberto Bichara/sxc.hu)
