Unemployment in Europe climbed to its highest level in four years in June, the European Union's (EU) statistics office said Friday amid signs of a growing number out of work in the world's leading economies, according to dpa. The statistics office, Eurostat said June seasonally adjusted unemployment in the broader 27-member EU edged up to 8.9 per cent in June from 8.8 per cent in May with the jobless numbers rising by 246,000 last month. The release of the latest grim European jobless data followed the publication Friday of figures showing the jobless rate in Japan climbing to a six-year high of 5.4 per cent in June with unemployment hitting a near 26-year-high of 9.5 per cent in the US last month. The increase in the numbers out of work in June meant a total of 21.526 million Europeans were without work last month. The EU unemployment rate stood at 6.9 per cent in June 2008. Another 158,000 people were unemployed in June in the 16 European nations sharing the euro, which pushed the eurozone jobless rate up to 9.4 per cent compared with a revised 9.3 per cent in May, Friday's figures showed. Up until now, short-time working schemes introduced in several key eurozone countries such as Germany and the Netherlands have helped to keep unemployment in check and allow employers to avoid scaling back their workforces. But economists warn that the lay-offs will in the currency bloc will surge by the end of the year as the recession catches up with the labour market in the eurozone. Unemployment in the eurozone stood at 7.5 per cent in June 2008. "With the economy still in recession and any recovery likely to be sluggish, unemployment, unfortunately, looks set to continue to rise this year and next," said ING Bank economist Martin van Vliet. Signs have emerged that the recession is loosening its grip on the world's leading economies. But with unemployment a lagging indicator, the risk is that the economic crisis could transform itself into a jobs crisis by the end of the year. The rise in European unemployment followed lengthening jobless queues across the Brussels-based EU's new members in Central Europe as well as in Spain. Friday's data showed the June jobless rate in Spain hitting 18.1 per cent, 17.2 per cent in Latvia and 17.0 per cent in Estonia. By comparison, in June the unemployment rate stood at 9.5 per cent in the United States and at 5.2 per cent in Japan.
