Malta's unemployment rate in February 2019 stood at 3.5%, which is the fourth lowest such rate in the whole Euro Area, statistics published by the European Union's statistics body Eurostat reveal.
Split by gender, the data shows that 3.8% of the male labour force is unemployed, compared to 3.1% of the female labour force. This equates to 3.5% as an average which in turn equates to around 9,000 people, the data shows.
The same publication shows that the youth unemployment rate stood at 8.8% in February 2019, up from 8.2% in January, but still down from the 9.4% rate registered in the last month of 2018. The youth unemployment rate is defined by Eurostat as the number of people aged 15 to 24 unemployed as a percentage of the labour force of the same age.
The rate comes in a very positive Euro area setting, with February's average unemployment rate across the whole area being at its lowest since October 2008, standing at 7.8%. The average unemployment rate in the whole of the European Union was even lower, standing at 6.5%.
This equates to 16.012 million people unemployed in the whole EU, 12.730 million of which are in the Euro Area. Compared with February2018, unemployment fell by 1.469million in the EU and by 1.169 million in the euro area.
Two other countries – Hungary and Poland – have the exact same unemployment rate (3.5%) as Malta, while a further three registered lower rates in the Euro area. These three are the Czech Republic (1.9%), Germany (3.1%), and the Netherlands (3.4%).
At the other end of the spectrum, Greece (18%), Spain (13%), Italy (10.7%) registered the highest unemployment rates in the Euro area.
Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in all Member States except Denmark and Austria where it remained stable. The largest decreases were registered in Greece (from 20.8% to 18.0% between December 2017 and December 2018), Cyprus (from 9.4% to 7.1%), Spain (from 16.2% to 13.9%) and Estonia (from 6.4% to 4.2% between January 2018 and January 2019).
Meanwhile, Eurostat also revealed that the Euro area annual inflation rate is expected to be 1.4% in March, marginally down from 1.5% in February.
Annual inflation is the change of the price level between the current month and the same month of the previous year.
Energy is expected to have the highest annual rate of inflation in March, at 5.3% compared with 3.6% in February, followed by food, alcohol and tobacco, at 1.8%, compared with 2.3% in February, the statistics show.
The rate has also gone down for services – 1.1% compared with 1.4% in February – and non-energy industrial goods – now 0.2% compared with 0.4% in February, Eurostat said.
from The Malta Independent https://ift.tt/2TQoJqz
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