Luxembourg, 1 Feb – Portugal’s rate of unemployment increased by 0.4 percentage points in December 2011 to 13.6 percent, the third worst rate in the Euro Zone, Eurostat, the European Union’s (EU) statistics office, said in Luxembourg Tuesday.

The countries with higher rates of unemployment than Portugal were Spain (22.5 percent) and Ireland (14.5 percent), and the lowest rates were seen in Austria (4.1 percent), the Netherlands (4.9 percent) and in Luxembourg (5.2 percent).

In terms of the Euro Zone, he overall rate stood at 10.4 percent in December, which was the highest level in almost 14 years and for the 27 European Union countries the unemployment rate totalled 9.9 percent of the active population.

“Against November 2011 the number of unemployed people rose by 24,000 in the European union and 20,000 in the Euro Zone,” said the statement from Eurostat adding that, year on year, there had been a rise of 923,000 unemployed people in the European Union and of 751,000 people in the Euro Zone countries. (macauhub)