Brussels: The unemployment rate for the countries that use the euro inched up in October to a record-high 11.7 percent, compared to 11.6 percent the previous month, Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, said Friday. That figure marks a new record for the eurozone, while the jobless rate for the 27-nation EU climbed to 10.7 percent last month, up from 10.6 percent in September. Spain’s unemployment rate rose from 25.8 percent in September to 26.2 percent, the highest rate in the EU, while Greece and Portugal had the second- and third-highest jobless rates, 25.4 percent and 16.3 percent, respectively. Some 25.9 million people were unemployed across the entire European Union and 18.7 million people in the eurozone last month, according to Eurostat estimates. Compared to September, the number of jobless rose by 204,000 in the EU and by 173,000 in the eurozone. Austria’s unemployment rate of 4.3 percent was the lowest in the EU, followed by Luxembourg with 5.1 percent, Germany with 5.4 percent and the Netherlands with 5.5 percent. Eurostat noted that in both the eurozone and the EU jobless rates rose “significantly� relative to October 2011, when they stood at 10.4 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively. The unemployment rate last month for those under the age of 25 was the highest in Greece and Spain, 57 percent and 55.9 percent, respectively, while the lowest jobless rates for that segment of the population were seen in Germany (8.5 percent) and the Netherlands (9.8 percent).

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