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Eurozone unemployment stays at 10%

Eurozone - Unemployment stays at 10%
Eurozone - Unemployment stays at 10%

Unemployment across the 16 countries which share the euro stuck at a record 10% in May for the third month in a row.

Almost 16m people were out of work in the common currency area as the unemployment rate in the crisis-hit eurozone remained at its highest level since the euro's creation in 1999, seasonally-adjusted Eurostat figures showed.

The official statistics agency had initially estimated an unemployment rate of 10.1% for April, but it revised the figure down to 10%.

The unemployment rate in the 27-nation EU stood at 9.6% in May, also unchanged from the previous month, for a total of 23.13m people without jobs.

Among the eurozone's biggest economies, unemployment fell slightly in Germany to 7% in May from 7.1% the previous month. It stood still in France at 9.9% and in Italy at 8.7%.

In Spain, the unemployment rate rose to 19.9%, compared to 19.7% in April.