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Italy has a record spike in jobless rate

LONDON - Italy's voters gave their verdict on the austerity medicine they've been forced to take when they went to the polls this week.

A man prepares to take his boat out into Lake Pamvotis amid heavy morning fog after going shopping in the northwestern Greek city of Ioannina, on Friday, March 1, 2013. Athens has overtaken the northwestern Epirus region as the area with the highest unemployment in Greece. The national jobless rate reached 27 percent in November, according to newly announced figures, led by greater Athens at 29 percent and followed by northwestern Greece at 28.2 percent. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)
A man prepares to take his boat out into Lake Pamvotis amid heavy morning fog after going shopping in the northwestern Greek city of Ioannina, on Friday, March 1, 2013. Athens has overtaken the northwestern Epirus region as the area with the highest unemployment in Greece. The national jobless rate reached 27 percent in November, according to newly announced figures, led by greater Athens at 29 percent and followed by northwestern Greece at 28.2 percent. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)Read moreAP
    by By Pan Pylas, Associated Press, Inquirer
    Published 

LONDON - Italy's voters gave their verdict on the austerity medicine they've been forced to take when they went to the polls this week.

By Friday, one of the reasons behind the protest was highlighted when the country's unemployment rate hit its highest level in at least two decades.

Official figures Friday showed that unemployment in the country in January rose to 11.7 percent from the previous month's 11.3 percent.

January's figure was the highest since the current way of measuring unemployment was introduced in 1992.

The unexpectedly large monthly spike was one of the key backdrops to the election results this week that reignited concerns over Europe's debt crisis. No party or coalition emerged with enough votes to govern alone, triggering uncertainty about the course of economic policy.

The rise in the Italian rate, coming as the country has been in recession for a year and a half, and after a wave of economic reforms and tight budgetary controls introduced to control the country's debt, was also the main reason why unemployment across the 17 European Union countries that use the euro rose to a record 11.9 percent during January from the previous month's 11.8 percent.

Even more dramatic is the rise in the level of youth unemployment for the eurozone to 24.2 percent - which raises the risk of removing a whole generation from the labor force.

Greece and Spain languish under the weight of mass unemployment of over 25 percent.

Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said nearly 19 million people were unemployed in the eurozone following an increase of around 200,000 in January.

The increase was not a surprise given that the eurozone economy is in recession and is expected to continue to contract in the first half of 2013. In the final three months of 2012, the eurozone contracted by a quarterly rate of 0.6 percent, with eight countries in recession.

Last week, the European Commission forecast that the eurozone unemployment rate was likely to rise further this year and average around 12.2 percent for the year as a whole.