Eurostat: Unemployment rate at 8.0%

The unemployment rate stood at 8.0 percent in December, compared to 8.2 percent in November, Eurostat informed Friday. The number of unemployes amounts to 1.39 million in December, versus 1.42 million the previous month. An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as someone aged 15 to 74 without work during the reference week who is available to start work within the next two weeks and who has actively sought employment at some time during the last four weeks. The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force. The Central Statistical Office (GUS) announced earlier that the unemployment rate in December was at 11.5 percent. The GUS methodology takes into account the number of registered unemployed in relation to the number of professionally active.