In December, the euro area seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 8.3%, up from 7.4% in 2019 while in Cyprus the jobless figure was similar at 7.3%, according to Eurostat.
The EU unemployment rate was 7.5% in December 2020, also stable compared with November and up from 6.5% in December 2019.
Unemployment in Cyprus decreased in December 2020 to 7.3% or 32,000 people (7.1% for men, 7.7% for women), down from 7.8% in November.
A year earlier the rate was 6.3% while youth unemployment was 21.3% or 7,000 individuals for the fourth quarter of 2020.
An estimated 16 mln in the EU, 13.67 mln was in the euro area, were unemployed in December.
Compared with November, the number of unemployed increased by 67,000 in the EU and by 55,000 in the euro area.
Compared with December 2019, unemployment rose by 1.95 mln in the EU and by 1.51 mln in the euro area.
In December, 3.13 mln young people (under 25) were unemployed in the EU.
In December 2020, the youth unemployment rate was 17.8% in the EU and 18.5% in the euro area, up from 17.5% and 18.1% respectively in the previous month.
In December 2020, the unemployment rate for women was 7.9% in the EU, stable compared with November 2020.
The unemployment rate for men was 7.1% in December, also stable compared with November.
In the euro area, the unemployment rate for women remained stable at 8.8% in December 2020 while it increased from 7.8% to 7.9% for men.
In Q3 2020, the quarter when COVID-19 containment measures were relaxed in most Member States, registrations of new businesses in the EU saw a significant increase compared with the previous quarter (up by 45.3%).
This broke the trend of falling registration numbers in both the first and second quarters of 2020.
The number of declarations of bankruptcies in the EU increased by 25.7% in Q3 2020 after a sharp decrease in the first and second quarters.
Year-on-year the number of registrations of new businesses increased by 2.2 % in the EU in Q3 2020 compared with the same quarter a year before, while the number of registered bankruptcies decreased by 17.7 %.
