Source : Presstv / 1 Feb 2014

Official figures show that the jobless rate in the eurozone remained near record high of 12 percent in December.

The jobless rate, which was released by the European Union's Statistics Office (Eurostat) on Friday, has remained unchanged since October.

The agency also said that 26.2 million people in the EU, of which 19.01 million were in the 18-nation eurozone, were unemployed in December.

According to Eurostat estimates, unemployment increased by 130,000 in the euro area in comparison with December 2012.

Greece (27.8 percent in October 2013) and Spain (25.8 percent) have the highest unemployment rates in which over one in four of their people are out of work. The lowest jobless rates are in Austria (4.9 percent) and Germany (5.1 percent).

EU youth unemployment is even worse. In Greece, as an example, 54.8 percent of those aged between 15 and 24 had no job in September.

The eurozone nations continue to encounter huge challenges, among them will be to get unemployment down.

The long-drawn-out eurozone debt crisis, which began in Greece in late 2009 and reached Italy, Spain, and France in 2011, is viewed as a threat not only to Europe but also to many of the world’s other developed economies.

The worsening debt crisis has forced the EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.