Youth unemployment in Malta, estimated at around 13%, is both lower than the EU average and among the lower percentages in the EU, figures published by Eurostat yesterday show.
In the first quarter of 2009, 4.9 million persons between 15 and 24 were unemployed, of which 3.1 million were living in the euro area. This is an increase of 900,000 in the EU27 and 600,000 in the euro area since the first quarter of 2008.
Youth unemployment has been increasing both in the euro area and in the EU27 in line with total unemployment. But the increase has been at a higher pace among young people. Youth unemployment increased by 3.9% between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 in the euro area to reach 18.4%. In the EU27 the increase was 3.7% leading to a rate of 18.3% in the first quarter of 2009.
The youth unemployment rate ranges from 6% in the Netherlands to 33.6 per cent in Spain in the first quarter of 2009. However, it should be remembered that a large share of persons between 15 and 24 are outside the labour market. Unemployment rates are expressed as a percentage of the labour force (employed plus unemployed), not of the population.
After three years of steadily declining unemployment, the economic crisis has hit the labour markets throughout Europe. In both the euro area and the EU27 the number of unemployed has increased each month since its low in March 2008. Since then the number of unemployed persons in the euro area has increased by 3.7 million to 15 million in May 2009 while in the EU27 the number of unemployed has risen by 5.4 million to 21.5 million.
The monthly increase in the euro area has gone up from 100,000 in mid-2008 to a recent peak of half a million last January. However, in the last months, the rate of increase has slowed down. In the EU27, the maximum increase was also recorded last January at around 800,000 before going down in recent months.
The unemployment rate, relating the unemployed persons to the total labour force, shot up from 7.2% in March 2008 to 9.5% in May 2009 in the euro area and from 6.7% to 8.9% in the EU27.
The unemployment rate in May 2009 is the highest since May 1999 in the euro area while for the EU27 it is the highest since June 2005.
The increases in unemployment have been far more severe in the Baltic states and in Spain than elsewhere.
In Estonia, the unemployment rate has gone up by almost a full percentage point a month since its lowest point in April 2008. In little over a year the ranks of the unemployed have swelled from 26,000 to 114,000, from 3.7% to 15.6%.
Both Latvia and Lithuania have experienced an average increase of 0.6% a month since their common turning point in November 2007. Both countries saw their unemployment rate more than treble in this period.
The Spanish labour market is also hard hit by the current economic crisis. An early onset of rising unemployment in May 2007 in combination with rapid monthly expansion has led to an extra 2.6 million unemployed. In May 2009, two years after unemployment started to rise, Spain has the highest jobless rate in the EU27 at 18.7%.
As one of the larger member states, the development of Spanish unemployment has a big influence on the European figures. Currently, 29% of all unemployed persons in the euro area are living in Spain.