Unemployment in Malta and the Rest of the EU
Malta’s employment rate is one of the most impressive in the EU, with the third-lowest unemployment rate at only 4.1%. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate of the Euro area is falling, though – it is currently 8.9%, after being 9% in August 2017 and 9.9% in September 2016, which is the lowest rate since 2009. Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office, released figures stating that the overall EU employment rate is 7.5%, which is the lowest it has been since November 2008.
They also explain that in September 2017, 18.446 million people in the EU, 14.513 of whom are in the Euro area, are unemployed. This is lower than a month previously, having fallen by 116,000 in the EU as a whole and 96,000 in the Euro area. This is also a lot less than a year previously, having fallen by over two million in the EU and almost 1.5 million in the Euro area.
Unemployment in EU Member States
The EU member states with the lowest unemployment rates are the Czech Republic (2.7%), Germany (3.6%) and also Malta, with a rate of 4.1%. The highest unemployment rates are in Greece, which had a rate of 21% in July 2017, and Spain 16.7%. Generally, unemployment rates in the EU are rising over time, except in Finland where it stayed the same, and Lithuania where it increased. The biggest decreases happened in Cyprus, Spain and Greece. The unemployment rate in the USA was 4.2% in September 2017, down 0.7% from a year earlier.
Youth Unemployment in the EU
Statistics from September 2017 show that 3.735 million people under 25 are unemployed in the European Union, 2.656 million of whom live in the Euro area. The overall decrease in youth unemployment in the EU was 396,000, and 229,000 in the Euro area. This equates to a youth employment rate of 16.6% in the EU as a whole, and 18.7% in the Euro area, which represents a significant fall from the previous year’s figures. Youth unemployment in Malta was is neither the highest or the lowest in the EU, with the lowest youth employment being in Germany (6.4%), and the highest being Greece (42.8% in July 2017), Spain (37.2%) and Italy (35.7%).
