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Economy

Euro Area Unemployment Reaches 12.1% in May

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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By way of contrast, during the depths of the U.S. recession, unemployment peaked at 10.1%. Eurostat announced that May unemployment in the euro area hit 12.1% in May, staggering given the fact that the area is the largest in the world by gross domestic product (GDP). It is one more signal that the economic trouble in the area has gotten worse, despite tiny improvements in the rate at which purchasing managers index (PMI) continues to drop, based on June Markit data.

Eurostat reported:

The euro area (EA17) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 12.1% in May 2013, up from 12.0% in April 4. The EU271 unemployment rate was 10.9%, stable compared with the previous month. In both zones, rates have risen markedly compared with May 2012, when they were 11.3% and 10.4% respectively.

The nations that have been in the deepest recession got to worst of it again:

Among the Member States, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.7%), Germany (5.3%) and Luxembourg (5.7%), and the highest in Spain (26.9%) and Greece (26.8% in March 2013).

Among the young (those under age 25), the situation was much more dire:

In May 2013, the lowest rates were observed in Germany (7.6%), Austria (8.7%) and the Netherlands (10.6%), and the highest in Greece (59.2% in March 2013), Spain (56.5%) and Portugal (42.1%).

The reality that six out of 10 people could be unemployed overwhelms even the figures of the U.S. Great Recession. And it begs the question how these people can live, particularly in countries in which support for the unemployed as ended.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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