Eurozone Jobless Falls but Rate Remains Stable at 11.5%

The eurozone's job market is slowly recovering as 137,000 fell out of unemployment in August, but the economic area's headline jobless rate remained unchanged at 11.5%.

However, Eurostat, the official statistics body of the European Commission, said the unemployment rate was down from 12% last year.

The research body estimated that 18.3 million people were out of work across the eurozone in August, down by 834,000 compared with last year.

Spain (24.4%) and Greece (27% in June) had some of the highest unemployment rates across the region.

In contrast, Germany (4.9%) and Austria (4.7) has some of the lowest jobless rate across the eurozone in August.

The UK also had one of the lowest unemployment rates at 6.2% in the three months to July, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Eurostat also said that the region's youth unemployment rate (for under 25s) was stable at 23.3% in August.

The research body explained that Germany (7.6%), Austria (44.2%) and the Netherlands (10.1%) had the lowest youth unemployment rates.

In contrast, the UK's unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 16.6% in the three months to July.