The unemployment picture in the euro area for June shows a steady trend even as the labor market continues to recover. For the third consecutive month, the headline rate sits at 6.6 percent, remaining 3.3 percentage points below the level seen in the same month of 2021. This figure marks the lowest unemployment level ever recorded for the Nineteen, based on data dating back to April 1998, according to Eurostat.
Across the euro area, the unemployment rate stayed 0.8 percentage points below the pre-pandemic level. Since February 2020, unemployment in euro area countries has hovered around 7.4 percent, a sign that the labor market has remained resilient through the post-pandemic period.
In the broader European Union, the rate held firm at 6.0 percent in June, compared with 7.2 percent a year earlier. This aligns with the EU’s ongoing trajectory toward stronger employment results and reflects the broad stability seen among the Twenty-Seven member states.
European Statistical Office estimates show that 12.931 million people were unemployed in the EU in June 2022, with 10.925 million of them in the euro area. On a month-to-month basis, there was a small decline of about 26 thousand unemployed in the EU and around 25 thousand in the euro area, signaling a modest easing in unemployment pressures.
Compared with June 2021, the number of unemployed dropped by 2.311 million across the EU and by 1.987 million within the euro area, underscoring meaningful improvement in employment conditions over the year.
Across all twenty-seven countries, Spain recorded the highest unemployment rate at 12.6 percent, followed by Greece at 12.3 percent and Italy at 8.1 percent. In contrast, the lowest rates were found in the Czech Republic at 2.4 percent, Poland at 2.7 percent, and Germany at 2.8 percent, illustrating a wide dispersion in labor market outcomes among EU members.
Looking at youth unemployment, under-25s in June faced an elevated rate of 13.6 percent in the euro area and the EU as a whole, reflecting ongoing challenges for early-career workers, even as overall unemployment improves. This rate was up from 13.2 percent in the euro area in the preceding month, indicating some volatility in youth labor market conditions.
In absolute terms, the EU counted 2.546 million unemployed young people in June, with 2.073 million of them located in the euro area, highlighting the greater share of youth unemployment concentrated in the euro zone during this period.
Spain alone accounted for 2.975 million unemployed in June 2022, of whom 469,000 were under the age of 25. The youth unemployment rate in Spain stood at 27.9 percent, making it the second-highest in the EU, after Greece at 29.5 percent, and ahead of Italy at 23.1 percent, reflecting divergent youth labor market outcomes within the bloc.