Euro Area: Unemployment rate further up in July, again held down by massive short-time work schemes
Labor market conditions in the common currency block worsened again in July, when Covid-19 containment measures were further loosened, although data released by Eurostat continues to show just a small portion of the deterioration. The number of unemployed people jumped by 344,000, and the unemployment rate increased to 7.9% in July from 7.7% in June.
Short-time work schemes involving a massive portion of the labor force across the Eurozone has prevented a jump in the unemployment rate so far. Moreover, discouraged people abandoning the active population are further contributing to contained jobless numbers.
That, said, looking at the countries with data available, 10 economies saw their unemployment rate increase in July, including Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, 5 countries saw their unemployment rate falling.
Disparities in the labor market among core and periphery countries persist. Greece is the economy in the Eurozone with the highest unemployment rate (17.0%, data refers to May), followed by Spain (15.8%). At the other end of the spectrum, Malta (4.1%), Germany (4.4%) and the Netherlands (4.5%) have the lowest unemployment rates.