Ceuta (26.6%), the Canary Islands (23.2%) and Andalusia (21.7%) were the three regions of the European Union (EU) with the highest unemployment rates in 2021 among people aged between 15 and 74 years, as reported this Friday by the Community Statistical Office, Eurostat.
Next were Western Macedonia, in Greece, with an unemployment level of 19.8%, followed by Melilla (19.8%) and Extremadura (19.5%).
Among the ten regions with the highest unemployment in the Twenty-Seven also appear Campania (19.3%) and Sicily (18.7%), in Italy, as well as South Aegean (18.8%) and Thrace and Eastern Macedonia (18.5%), in Greece.
In contrast, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Warsaw and in the Hungarian region of Central Transdanubia (2.1% in both cases), as well as in Wielkopolskie (Poland), Western Transdanubia (Hungary) and Central Moravia (Czech Republic), all three with a percentage of 2.2%.
Also noteworthy is the low unemployment in Prague and the Polish region of Pomorskie (2.3% in both cases), as well as in the Czech regions of the southwest, southeast and northeast (2.4% in all three).
Compared to 2020, the largest increases in unemployment occurred in the Romanian regions of the northeast and southwest Oltenia (increase of 3.1 percentage points) and in the French region of Languedoc-Roussillon (2.2 points more).
The main decreases occurred in Western Greece (5.8 points less), the Bulgarian region of the northwest (4.4 points) and Epirus, in Greece (4.2 points less).
Unemployment among people aged 15 to 29 in 2021 stood at 13% in the EU, a decrease of 0.9 percentage points compared to 2020.
The Spanish regions were again at the head of youth unemployment in the Twenty-Seven in a classification led by Ceuta (56%), followed by Thrace and Eastern Macedonia (45.1%) and Western Macedonia (42.3%), in Greece, and Melilla (41.9%). The sixth position was occupied by the Canary Islands (39.5%).
The lowest levels of youth unemployment were detected in the Czech region of the southwest (3.7%), the Polish region of Wielkopolskie (4%) and the Czech region of Central Moravia (4.4%).
