Portugal has the fourth highest youth unemployment rate (15-24 years old) in the European Union (EU), corresponding to 20.3% in February, against 14.8% in the bloc of 27, reveal data published this Wednesday by Eurostat.
According to the European statistics office, Portugal is only behind Sweden (23.2%), Greece (25%) and Spain (28.2%).
The youth unemployment rate in the EU fell compared to January (14.9%, or 13 thousand fewer people), but increased compared to the same month last year (14.1%, 174 thousand more people). Specifically, in February, there were 2.89 million young people under the age of 25 without a job, of which 2.31 million were accounted for in the 19 countries of the euro zone.
In global terms, the unemployment rate stabilized in the EU at 6.5%with Eurostat estimating 13.2 million unemployed in the EU, of which 11.1 million in the euro zone.
Among the Member States, Spain once again led the way for the worst reasons, with the highest unemployment rate (11.5%), followed by Greece (11.0%) and Sweden (8.1%) while, at the extreme Oppositely, the Czech Republic (2.6%), Slovenia (3.1%), Germany and Malta (3.2% each) had the lowest rates.
In Portugal, the unemployment rate was 6.7%, still above the EU.
