Euro Zone Unemployment Hits 12 Year High

The WSJ reports:

The euro zone's unemployment rate rose to its highest level for almost 12 years in April, while growth in manufacturing output slowed sharply last month as the currency bloc's sovereign-debt crisis deepened, figures showed Tuesday.

The European Union's Eurostat agency said the unemployment rate across the 16 countries that share the euro increased to 10.1% in April from 10.0% in March, the highest level since June 1998. Economists were expecting the rate to hover at 10.0%.

There were 15.9 million unemployed people across the 16 countries that share the euro in April, more than the entire populations of Austria and Ireland combined. But there are signs the jobless rate may be close to peaking after only 25,000 people joined jobless queues in April, the second-smallest increase since March 2008, Eurostat said.

Source: EuroStat