Eurozone unemployment drops to record-low 6.5% in March

Unemployment in the eurozone hit a record low of 6.5 percent in March, the EU's statistics agency said Wednesday.

The reading, down from 6.6 percent in February, is the lowest since Eurostat started compiling jobless figures in April 1998 for the economies in the single-currency area.

Unemployment in the overall EU area, which includes the eurozone, was 6.0 percent in March, unchanged from February.


Eurostat estimated that for the entire 27-nation European Union, 12.96 million adults were unemployed in March, with 11.01 million of them in the eurozone.

But other data is not all positive for the European economy.

Eurozone inflation, for instance, rose last month according to figures published Tuesday.

Consumer prices increased 7.0 percent on an annualised basis, the first rise after five consecutive months of declines, after hitting a peak of 10.6 percent in October following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

April's reading will likely push the European Central Bank to further raise interest rates on Thursday as inflation remains well above its two-percent target.

Eurostat's figures on Wednesday showed that in the eurozone's biggest economy, Germany, the unemployment rate was 2.8 percent, down from 3.0 percent in March 2022.

In the second biggest, France, it was 6.9 percent, down from 7.4 percent a year earlier.

The Czech Republic, which is not in the eurozone, had the lowest unemployment rate in the EU, at 2.6 percent, while eurozone member Spain was the highest at 12.8 percent.

aro-raz/rl