(27 April 2017) – More than 80% of the NUTS 2 regions of the European Union saw their unemployment rate fall in 2016 compared with 2015, and around 60% recorded a decrease of at least 0.5 percentage points.
However, regional unemployment rates continued to vary widely across the EU regions, with the lowest rates recorded in Lower Bavaria (2.1%) in Germany and Prague (2.2%) in the Czech Republic, followed by the German regions of Upper Bavaria (2.4%), Franconia (2.5%) and Tübingen (2.6%).
At the opposite end of the scale, the highest unemployment rates were registered in Western Macedonia (31.3%) in Greece, Melilla (30.8%) in Spain, Western Greece (29.8%), Andalucía (28.9%) and Extremadura (27.5%) in Spain and Mayotte (27.1%), an overseas region of France.
In more than three-quarters of the EU regions, the unemployment rate for young people was at least twice that of total unemployment.