10 per cent unemployed across eurozone

The eurozone's jobless rate remained stuck at 10 per cent in December, hovering near a 12-year high for the seventh month running and unmoved by signs of recovery elsewhere. Eurostat said the number of people in the eurozone without a job fell by 73,000 on the month, dropping to 15.8 million, but was up by 178,000 from the same month a year earlier.

The trend was unlikely to change soon, analysts said, though the figures reinforced the divergence of labour markets within the region, with high unemployment in peripheral economies such as Spain, pictured, Italy and Ireland, while the rate is largely flat or falling in Germany, Finland and the Netherlands. Unemployment among the under-25s in the region was 20.4 per cent.

According to differently calibrated data from Berlin, the unemployment rate is now at a near 19-year low of 7.4 per cent in Germany. The Eurostat data showed Germany's jobless rate at 6.6 per cent.