The euro zone's unemployment rate held steady in May, at 11.6 percent, in a further sign that the region's bumpy recovery is struggling to take hold. It followed separate data which revealed that manufacturing activity in the euro zone slid to a seven-month low in June.
Some 18.55 million people were unemployed across the currency bloc in May, according to Eurostat data published Tuesday, a fall of 28,000 from April. However this reduction in joblessness was not enough to drive the unemployment rate lower.
The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria and Germany, at around 5 percent. However joblessness remained worryingly high in Greece (26.8 percent in March 2014) and Spain (25.1 percent).
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