Eurozone jobless rate at record 11.2% in June

BRUSSELS: Unemployment across the recession-hit eurozone was a record 11.2% in June, with more jobs lost in the single currency area, official data show.

European Union (EU) data agency Eurostat said the seasonally-adjusted rate was the same as an upwardly revised May toll but noted a further 123,000 people lost their jobs going into the European summer, bringing the total to nearly 18 million, more than two million up on a year earlier.
Marking a 14th successive monthly rise, analysts noted a cumulative rise of 2.248 million people since that series began in April last year. London-based Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight warned that the unemployment rate “now looks odds-on” to cross 11.5% by the end of the year, with “a very real danger” of reaching 12% next year.

In Germany, the Federal Labour Agency said yesterday that raw or unadjusted unemployment also rose sharply in July, with the total number of people out of work up 66,800 on June at 2.88 million.
Eurostat estimates 25 million men and women are unemployed across the full 27-state EU.
The EU uses slightly different statistical calculations for comparisons, but said the rate in the United States in June was 8.2% and in Japan, 4.4%.

Meanwhile, eurozone inflation was unchanged in July for the third month running at an annualised 2.4%, still well above the core target of the European Central Bank (ECB), according to Eurostat.
The figures marked the 20th consecutive month that inflation came in above the ECB's medium-term inflation target of just below but close to 2%.
Analysts, though, said the trend going forward would be downwards. London-based Jennifer McKeown of Capital Economics maintained that “energy inflation is likely to fall again before long and core inflation will be pulled down by the deepening recession.”
She added, two days ahead of a key meeting at the ECB, that “the still-high rate of inflation need not prevent the ECB from taking further action to try to pull the region out of recession this week or after.” - AFP