(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The economic crisis in southern Europe may be easing, a key survey signalled yesterday, but new data showed the eurozone jobless rate returned to a record high of 12.1 percent in May.
There are signs too that economies in eastern/central Europe may be on the mend.
The Eurostat figures offered little hope of a quick end to the social crisis, with the unemployment rate for the entire European Union being unchanged at 10.9 percent.
Eurostat said 26.4 million Europeans are now out of work.
Provisional official data in Italy showed the jobless rate hitting a new record of 12.2 percent.
EU leaders agreed to deploy up to £8bn ($10.4bn) in programmes to fight youth unemployment at a summit in Brussels last week after US President Barack Obama warned of the risk of a "lost generation" in Europe.
The Eurostat report, which revised previous figures, showed the eurozone rate reached 12.1 percent in March.
It then edged down to 12.0 percent in April - a slight improvement that ended two years of increases - but then rose in May.
The results were far worse than in May of last year, when eurozone unemployment was at 11.3 percent and the EU rate at 10.4 percent. For under-25s the picture was even bleaker, with the rate rising to 23.0 percent for the EU as a whole from 22.8 percent in May 2012. In the eurozone, it rose to 23.8 percent from 23.0 percent.
There were wide differences between EU members. Unemployment fell in May in 10 countries on a 12-month comparison.
The best results were in Latvia, where the rate fell to 12.4 percent from 15.5 percent, and in Estonia where it went down to 8.3 percent from 10.0 percent.
The worst was Cyprus, where the banking sector is being cut radically and where the jobless rate rose to 16.3 percent in May 2013 from 11.4 percent in May 2012. Unemployment data is a lagging indicator. In a separate set of figures, eurozone manufacturing showed signs of continued improvement in June.
The Markit Eurozone Composite Purchasing Managers Index, a survey of what businesses see happening in their production processes, rose to 48.8 in June - a 16-month high - from 48.3 in May. The PMI index is considered to be a reliable indicator of future activity.
Ireland saw an improvement and Spain remained stable, while the rates of contraction eased in Austria, France, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands.
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