EU area unemployment up 1.9 million in a year – as Spain’s jobless rate nears 25%

Green Politics

From April 2011 to April 2012, unemployment has risen across the European Union, with Spain's jobless rate nearing one in four, reports Shamik Das.

E-mail-sign-up Donate

 

.

At the start of the week, Left Foot Forward reported the story of a new pan-European campaign, “Austerity Isn’t Working”, a coalition of progressive institutions in favor of a pro-European, pro-growth agenda.

Carlos Mulas, Executive Director of Fundacion IDEAS, explained:

It was just over a year ago, in Madrid, when the movement of “indignados” took to the streets and gathered the world’s attention with their calls for a more inclusive democracy and economy.

Their proposals to strengthen democracy from the “bottom up” to counterbalance unregulated market economies was welcomed across the globe. The “indignados” movement took different forms in New York, Tel Aviv and London, inspiring a summer of social activism. Fast forward a year, however, and the calls for inclusion are as great as ever.

Today, there was further proof of the failure of austerity across Europe – and the toll on Spain in particular – with the publication of the latest Eurostat unemployment statistics (pdf).

As Chart 1 shows, in the year from April 2011 to April 2012, unemployment has risen in nearly all European Union states for which data is available, with Spain’s jobless rate nearing one in four.

Chart 1:

Eurostat-Apr-2011-Apr-2012-unemployment-stats

 

See also:

• WATCH: Krugman savages the austerians with embarrassing ease 31 May 2012

• Now the EC warns Osborne: Deficit “projected to fall more slowly” due to weak growth 30 May 2012

• Austerity Isn’t Working • Sparpolitik ist keine Lösung • L’austérité ne marche pas 28 May 2012

 

These are the key stats:

• The Europan Union (EU27) unemployment rate was 10.3% in April 2012, up 0.8 points from 9.5% in April 2011;

• The euro area (EA17) unemployment rate was 11% in April 2012, up 1.1 points from 9.9% in April 2011;

• The EU unemployment figure was 24.667 million in April 2012, up 1.932 million since April 2011;

• The EA unemployment figure was 17.405 million in April 2012, up 1.797 million since April 2011.

• Austria (3.9%), Luxembourg (5.2%), Holland (5.2%) and Germany (5.4%) have the lowest unemployment rates; and

• Spain (24.3%), Greece (21.7% in February 2012), Latvia (15.2% in the first quarter of 2012) and Portugal (15.2%) have the highest jobless rates.

And there was further grim news from the States, with the US unemployment rate up to 8.2% from 8.1%, bad but 2.1 and 2.9 points below the EU and EA rates respectively.

Austerity is failing, and we’re all paying the price.

 

Sign-up to our weekly email • Donate to Left Foot Forward

No related posts.

27 Responses to “EU area unemployment up 1.9 million in a year – as Spain’s jobless rate nears 25%”

  1. Anonymous

    That’s right, I DARE look at the facts. Moreover, we’re going to have another recession that bad, thanks to your Tories.

    You, personally, are directly responsible for your politics causing misery and death. That you try and [palm it off into others, when the bloodstained whip’s in yoiur hand is typical. No personal responsibility, it’s all a game to you.

    The sickness of treating it as a game is just that – all politics is personal. If you cut me, you cut me.

  2. Anonymous

    Your lies have got so ridiculous that I have to dismiss you as a troll. The facts – two illegal wars under New Labour, zero under the Conservatives; the poor got poorer under New Labour, while the rich got richer: under the Conservatives the rich got richer and poor got richer. So Blair and Brown are responsible for misery and death.

  3. Anonymous

    I see, the depression isn’t deep enough and not enough people are out of work for you. The 99% are not suffering enough.

    Typical double-dip denial.

  4. Anonymous

    I doubt they had the financial markets as we do now or that the country turned away from manufacturing towards the banking which of course Thatcher decided and Blair accepted.

    I think you spell your name wrong.

  5. Anonymous

    Thatcher was pro-manufacturing not pro-banking but she made a big mistake in letting the currency float upwards which hurt our manufacturing industry and helped neither. London was by far the biggest banking centre in the world, as measured by the number of banks registered and operating, before Thatcher came to power. When she resigned banking, insurance and financial services combined employed less than 4% of the workforce. The NHS employed more than twice as many people. The steepest fall in manufacturing employment came under New Labour after the introduction of the Minimum Wage.
    It would help if you checked your facts occasionally, but these are irrelevant to Spain’s problems of youth unemployment.

Comments are closed.