(27 April 2020) – In 2019, the year before COVID-19 containment measures were widely introduced by EU Member States, unemployment rates continued to vary widely across the NUTS 2 regions of the EU’s 27 Member States.
The lowest rates were recorded in four Czech regions: Prague and Central Bohemia (both 1.3%), South-West (1.5%) as well as North-East (1.7%), followed by West Transdanubia (1.8%) in Hungary, two German regions, Upper Bavaria and Tübingen, and one further Czech region, South-East (all 1.9%).
At the opposite end of the scale, the highest unemployment rates were registered in Mayotte (30.1%) an overseas region of France, the Spanish autonomous cities of Melilla (27.0%) and Ceuta (25.8%) and two Greek regions, West Macedonia (24.6%) and Western Greece (24.1%).
Compared with 2018, almost three quarters (74%) of EU’s regions saw their unemployment rate for persons aged 15-74 fall. Almost half (48%) recorded a decrease of at least 0.5 percentage points.