Eurostat's figures for August put Finland at 9.9% and Spain at 10.0%, the two highest in the euro area. In 2013 Spain's annual average was 17.8 percentage points higher.
Noodle News data desk · reading time ~2 min
9.9%
Finland's unemployment rate, August 2026, seasonally adjusted
10.0%
Spain's rate in the same month, down from 13.3% in January 2022
17.8 points
Spain's lead over Finland in 2013, in annual averages
What the data shows
Spain's rate fell and Finland's rose until they met
Spain has long had one of the euro area's highest unemployment rates. Finland, on Eurostat's latest figures, has now caught up with it.1 The EU statistics office, whose monthly series was updated on 15 October, puts Finland at 9.9% in August and Spain at 10.0%.
The change has come from both ends. Spain's rate has fallen by more than three points since early 2022, while Finland's has risen by almost three and peaked at 10.7% in May, its highest since January 1999.1 Since September 2025 Finland's rate has been above Spain's in eight months, below it in three and level in one. Before November 2025, Finland's rate had not exceeded Spain's in any month of the series, which starts in 1986 for Spain and 1988 for Finland.
Exhibit 01
Unemployment rate, Finland, Spain and the euro area, since January 2022
Source: Eurostat, monthly unemployment (une_rt_m), seasonally adjusted, ages 15 to 74, both sexes, as updated 15 October 2026. Euro area is the 21 members. The vertical axis starts at zero.1
The long view
A gap of 17.8 points in 2013 has closed
In 2013, the worst year of the euro crisis, Spain's annual average was 26.1% against 8.3% in Finland. By 2019 the gap was about 7 points and by 2024 about 3. Over the last twelve months (September 2025 to August 2026), Finland averaged 10.3% and Spain 10.2%.1
Exhibit 02
Unemployment rate, Spain and Finland, annual averages
Source: Noodle News calculation from Eurostat monthly seasonally adjusted rates: the simple mean of twelve monthly rates for each calendar year, and for 2025-26, meaning September 2025 to August 2026.1
Key finding. On the latest twelve months the two countries are level. The change since 2013 is mostly Spain's fall, but Finland's rise since 2022 has finished the job.
In context
No other euro-area country is close to either
France, at 8.2%, is the next highest, followed by Estonia at 8.0% and Greece at 7.4%. The euro-area rate as a whole was 6.4%.1
Exhibit 03
Unemployment rate in the 21 euro-area countries, August 2026
Source: Eurostat, monthly unemployment, seasonally adjusted, August 2026. Finland and Spain highlighted.1
What we don't know
These are Eurostat's harmonised rates, and Eurostat takes them from national labour force surveys. Statistics Finland's own trend rate for August was 10.1%, against Eurostat's 9.9% seasonally adjusted figure, because the two use different smoothing.2 Spain's national statistics office reported 9.87% for April to June, which is not seasonally adjusted and so is not comparable month by month.3 We have not examined why Finland's rate rose, and Eurostat's series does not say.
Caveat
Caveat. The strongest objection is that Finland's monthly figure is noisy. It swung from 8.5% in May 2025 to 10.0% in June 2025 and, in the last year, has moved by as much as 0.7 points in a month, while Spain's has moved by no more than 0.2. A single month's ranking therefore says little. The claim that holds is the one about averages: over twelve months the two are level, with a gap of 0.1 points, too small to tell the two apart. The headline does not say Finland has overtaken Spain, and neither does this piece.
Method. Rates are Eurostat's seasonally adjusted monthly unemployment rates for ages 15 to 74, both sexes, from the dataset une_rt_m as updated on 15 October 2026. Annual averages are simple means of the twelve monthly rates, computed in code; the final period is September 2025 to August 2026. The euro area is the 21 current members, and the August 2026 bars use August for every country (Ireland and the Netherlands have a September figure that is not used). Printed values were checked against the published ones. The national figures for Finland and Spain are from their statistics offices and use different definitions, so they corroborate the direction and are not compared with Eurostat's levels.