Ley de Aceptación
L A ANATOMÍA DE LA ACEPTACIÓN
In April 2000, the unemployment rate — i.e. the percentage of unemployed persons in the total economically active population — stood at 8.4 % in the European Union. Some national and, above all, regional figures differed significantly from this average.
If we look only at the NUTS-2 regions, the unem- ployment rate in the regions of the European Union ranges from 1.7 % in the Åland island re- gion of Finland to 33.1 % in the French overseas department of Réunion. For every 100 economi- cally active people, therefore, roughly 19 times as many were out of work in Réunion as in Åland. Of the 211 regions considered, 50 had an unem- ployment rate of 4.2 % or less — i.e. less than half the EU average — in April 2000. These 50 NUTS- 2 regions were spread across 11 Member States. Only Greece, Spain and France had no NUTS-2 regions with an unemployment rate of or under 4.2 %. This also applies to Denmark. At the other extreme, 17 regions (in Italy, Spain, France and Germany) had unemployment rates of over 16.8 %, at least double the rate for the European Union as a whole.
Particularly striking here are the large differentials between the regions with the lowest and highest unemployment rates in some Member States such as France (5.3 % in Alsace compared with 33.1 % in Réunion), Spain (4.8 % in the Islas Baleares compared with 25.5 % in Ceuta y Melilla) and Italy (3.1 % in Trentino-Alto Adige compared with 27.7 % in Calabria).
The most pronounced changes in the unemploy- ment rate from April 1999 to April 2000 were in four Greek regions. The Anatoliki Makedonia, Thraki region recorded a fall of 4.2 percentage points, and the Voreio Aigaio region a fall of 3.9 percentage points. The two regions with the steep- est increases were Notio Aigaio (+ 3.1 percentage points) and Peloponnisos (+ 1.8 percentage points).
R e g i o n s : S t a t i s t i c a l y e a r b o o k 2 0 0 2 59 04-Regional unemployment EN 3/10/02 16:30 Página 59
In all, approximately 95 % of the NUTS-2 regions experienced a drop in unemployment between 1999 and 2000.
Regional differences in the youth unemployment rate, i.e. the unemployment rate amongst eco- nomically active people aged under 25, are appre- ciably greater than for the general unemployment rate. In April 2000, they ranged from 2.9 % in the Flevoland region of the Netherlands to 64.7 % in the Italian region of Calabria.
Female unemployment rates in the regions of the European Union in April 2000 ranged from 1.7 % to 40.7 %. The lowest value, of 1.7 %, was recorded by Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Ox- fordshire (United Kingdom) and Åland (Finland). The highest figures were recorded by the Italian region of Calabria (40.7 %) and the Spanish re- gions of Extremadura (37.0 %), Ceuta y Melilla (36.6 %) and Andalucia (35.6 %).
With the harmonisation process not yet complete, the figures available for the EU candidate coun- tries relate to the whole of the second quarter, not just April. The unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2000 in the candidate countries was 12.5 %. The regional figures differed significantly from this average.
Looking again only at the NUTS-2 regions in these countries, the unemployment rate ranges from 3.4 % in the region containing capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, to 31.0 % in the Severozapaden region of Bulgaria. Interestingly, the corresponding figures for the NUTS-2 regions in the European Union are roughly the same, ranging from 1.7 % to 33.1 %.
Clearly, the trends in unemployment in the EU Member States and in the candidate countries ran in opposite directions from 1998 to 2000. Where- as the unemployment rate in the EU countries fell from 10.4 % in 1998 to 9.4 % in 1999 and stood at 8.5 % in 2000, it rose in the candidate coun- tries from 9.1 % in 1998 to 10.4 % in 1999, before climbing to 12.5 % in 2000.
Of the 53 regions examined, two had an unem- ployment rate of less than 5 %. A further 21 re- gions posted rates below 10 %. These regions are all in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovenia. The capital regions of Slovakia and Bul-
garia also have rates of below 10 %. At the other end of the scale, 10 regions, in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Poland, had unemployment rates in excess of 20 %. This is a substantial increase on the previ- ous year when only four regions posted rates of over 20 %.
Slovakia and Bulgaria show the largest differences between regions. The regional differences are sim- ilar to those of the European Union Member States.
The trend at regional level is also to be observed at national level. The overall unemployment rate for these countries rose between 1999 and 2000 from 10.4 to 12.5 %. The change for Latvia, Slovenia, Romania and the Czech Republic was on the small side, and Hungary even recorded a decrease. Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Lithuania, on the other hand, experienced an in- crease, which was most marked in Poland and Lithuania.
The breakdown of unemployment by gender shows that the female unemployment rate is just as high as that for men. Over the same period, fe- male unemployment rates in the NUTS-2 regions of the European Union ranged from 1.7 to 40.7 %, and thus covered a wider span than in the candidate countries. It can be concluded from these figures that the participation of men and women in the labour markets in the candidate countries is more balanced than in the European Union, a situation which may be due to historical factors.
Regional differences in the youth unemployment rate are appreciably greater than for the general and female unemployment rates, as they range from 7.9 % in Hungary’s Közép-Dunántúl region to 73.1 % in the Severozapaden region of Bulgar- ia. This trend is also the opposite of that for youth unemployment within the European Union. Whereas no region in the candidate countries posted a rate of more than 50 % the previous year and the rate was higher than 40 % in only six re- gions (in Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia), there are now 12 regions with youth unemployment of over 40 % and two have even topped 50 %. Poland, in particular, has recorded a sharp increase in youth unemployment. R e g i o n s : S t a t i s t i c a l y e a r b o o k 2 0 0 2 60