2018.02.0101:32:00UTC+00Eurozone Unemployment Rate Steady at 9-Year Low

The eurozone jobless rate was steady at 8.7 percent in December, remaining at its lowest level since January 2009.

Although the unemployment rate remains highest in Greece, the Hellenic Republic has seen the largest drop over the past year. Unemployment in the country was at 20.7 percent in October, the last date for which data is available, down from 23.3 percent the previous year.

Other southern European states have also reduced their unemployment rates sharply since December 2016, with Portugal, Croatia and Spain all notching up declines of over two percentage points over the year.

Malta, Germany and the Czech Republic had the most people in employment.

Portugal currently has the lowest jobless rate the country has seen in 13 years.

The european economy expanded faster than the US in 2017, according to official data released this week, which shows a rise of 2.5 percent in both the eurozone and European Union last year.

The results published by the EU's statistics office Eurostat record the best period of growth for both groupings in more than a decade, and put them slightly ahead of the US, which posted a 2.3 percent expansion in 2017.

Eurostat also estimated that gross domestic product in the 19 countries sharing the euro and the 28-member EU expanded 0.6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with the previous quarter.