Greece, Spain Unemployment Rates Still the Highest in the EU

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Unemployment in the euro area grew again in March, supporting the obvious conclusion that a lack of stimulus, terribly high unemployment and the crippling of the financial and industrial sectors will keep pulling most countries in the region into an ever deeper recession.

Eurostat reports on the euro area unemployment rate:

The euro area (EA17) seasonally adjusted unemployment was 12.1% up from 12% in February The EU27 unemployment rate was 10.9%, stable compared with February. In both zones, rates have risen markedly compared with March 2012, when they were 11% and 10.3 % respectively.

It should be no surprise that Greece was at 27.2% (January), Spain at 26.7% in March and Portugal was at 17.5% last month. These numbers are awful, but they seem modest when youth unemployment is taken into account. The notion that there could be a “lost generation” economically, marked by lack of jobs and the inability to buy consumer goods and services, could well turn out to be accurate as people in their early twenties cannot find work. Based on current economic conditions, they will be unable to for years.

According to Eurostat:

In March 2013, the youth unemployment rate was 23.5 % in the EU27 and 24.0 % in the euro area, compared with 22.6% and 22.5 % respectively in March 2012.

In Greece, the figure in January was 59.1%, and in March the figure was 55.9% in Spain.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618