Unemployment rate in the Czech Republic holds at record low

The November Czech unemployment rate was the lowest reported unemployment rate in EU history, and the very first time Eurostat reported an unemployment rate under 2%.

While the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic has seen some small changes since then due to seasonal fluctuation, five months later the story is still the same: in March 2019 numbers released earlier this week, Eurostat has pegged the Czech Republic’s unemployment rate at 1.9% once again.

With an unemployment rate of 3.2%, Germany remains the second-lowest next to the Czech Republic. Still, the 1.3% difference between the two countries is the widest in the EU apart from the four countries reporting the highest unemployment rates.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, those countries would be France (with an 8.8% unemployment rate), Italy (10.2%), Spain (14.0%), and Greece (18.5%).

Across the EU, meanwhile, the average unemployment rate has slightly dipped over the past five months. In November 2018, the EU average was 6.7%, while the March unemployment rate across the 28 EU countries is 6.4%.

Among almost all EU countries, unemployment numbers have been slowly inching towards pre-2008 crisis levels over the past three years. An estimated total of 16 million people in the EU were unemployed in March 2019, but that number was 1.5 million less than the previous year.

While the Czech Republic tops Germany with its overall unemployment rate, however, Germany leads the EU in youth unemployment. Among persons under 25, Germany reported a 5.6% unemployment rate in March, while the Czech Republic was second at 6.3%.

Outside of the EU, Iceland posted an overall unemployment rate of 3.0% in March, which would rank them second behind the Czech Republic among European countries. Norway’s unemployment rate was estimated at 3.9%.