Also in Slovakia, this trend has been seen, when the jobless rate fell to 11.7 percent in July, according to the EU’s Eurostat statistics office. However, the country still remains among the ten worst EU members from this point of view. Only those EU countries which have had some financial problems in the past – like Greece or Cyprus – report worse results.
Ľubomír Koršňák, analyst of at UniCredit bank, sees the faster economic growth as being behind the development; it reached 1.6 percent in the second quarter, compared to 2014. “A stronger economic growth generates new jobs and contributes to a decline in the unemployment rate in most Eurozone and EU countries,” the analyst opined for the Sme daily.
Youth unemployment follows the same pattern. Among people under 25 years of age, 24.8 are unemployed – against more than 30 percent last July. Slovakia has similar development. A decline in youth unemployment can be ascribed also to the fact that ever more people are leaving the active economy to retire which means that more jobs are vacated which can be filled by the young, Sme wrote on September 3.