In May 2020, Croatia was among five EU member states with the highest increase in unemployment compared to April, the EU's statistical office, Eurostat, said in a report on Thursday, reflecting the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

Many European countries are trying to prevent job losses with special jobkeeping measures or forced leave or a shorter working week.

At the same time governments have started gradually relieving lockdown measures and enterprises have begun operating and employing again.

Eurostat underscored that the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in an unprecedented situation on the labour market, so that additional indicators will be included in future reports including employment, under-employment and potential additional stakeholders on the labour market.

In today’s report Eurostat notes that the EU’s seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in May was 6.7 percent, equal to May 2019. In April unemployment was 6.6 percent.

A total of 14.366 million men and women in the EU were unemployed in May 2020. Compared to April that number increased by 253,000.

The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate in Croatia in May was 8.9 percent or 0.8 percentage points higher than in April.

A total of 164,000 Croatians were out of work in May or 16,000 more than in April and 44,000 more than in May 2019.

Croatia is alongside Lithuania and Latvia which too recorded an increase in unemployment in May of 0.8 percentage points.

Cyprus recorded the biggest increase in unemployment (+1.3 percentage points).

The lowest unemployment rates in May were recorded in Spain (14.5 percent) followed by Cyprus (10.2 percent).

In May 2020, 2.815 million young persons (under 25) were unemployed in the EU.

In May 2020, the youth unemployment rate was 15.7 percent in the EU, up from 15.4 percent in the previous month. Compared with April 2020, youth unemployment increased by 64,000 in the EU.