The unemployment rate for the EU 27 (10.7 percent) almost reached the Hungarian figure, and that of the euro-zone already exceeded it at the beginning of 2012 and it is currently almost 1 percentage point higher.

With regard to data of the region it can be concluded that the unemployment rate in Hungary has been steadily declining, whereas in the other countries the number of unemployed has been on the rise. With the exception of the Czech Republic (7.4 percent) and Poland (10.6 percent) unemployment indicators are all higher than in Hungary (10.9 percent in October 2012). In the past couple of months an unambiguous upward trend can be observed in Poland and it has only a narrow gap of some tenths of a percentage point with the gradually declining Hungarian rate.

In the region the unemployment rate is the highest in Slovakia (14.5 percent) which is 3.6 percentage points higher than the Hungarian figure; the Bulgarian rate is 1.5 percentage points more than the Hungarian and that of Poland is almost on a par with it.

Source: Ministry for National Economy