Euro zone unemployment stayed unchanged at 8.8 per cent in March for the 13th month in a row as 12.4 million people were without jobs, the European Union statistics office said today.
Eurostat for the first time released unemployment data for the 25-member EU, with the rate steady at 9 per cent from February and from March 2003.
In the EU-25 19.1 million people were jobless in March.
The jobless rate in the euro zone has been flat at 8.8 per cent since March 2003. In February 2003 it was 8.7 per cent.
The data compares with a US jobless rate of 5.7 per cent and a Japanese rate of 4.7 per cent.
A European Commission report last month said surveys did not suggest any significant strengthening in the labour market in the first months of 2004 but added that employment had been very resilient during the current slowdown.
With unemployment running at 4.1 per cent, Luxembourg had the lowest jobless level in the EU followed by Ireland and Austria, both with 4.5 per cent.
But unemployment in three of the 10 new countries that joined the EU on May 1 topped the table. Poland had the highest rate with 19 per cent, followed by Slovakia with 16.5 per cent and Lithuania with 11.5 per cent. Spain had the fourth-highest rate at 11.1 per cent.
The top two euro zone economies - Germany and France - had jobless rates of 9.3 per cent and 9.4 per cent respectively.