Joblessness continued to decline in August. A sizeable 94,000 drop to 10.925 million followed a steeper revised 89,000 decrease in July and means that the number of people out of work has fallen below 11 million for the first time on record. The jobless rate held steady at the previous period's 6.4 percent, matching both its all-time low and the market consensus.

Amongst the larger Eurozone countries, national unemployment rates eased in Italy (6.2 percent after 6.4 percent) and Spain (11.3 percent after 11.4 percent). However, they were unchanged in both France (7.5 percent) and Germany (3.5 percent) where growth has been particularly soft.

The ongoing tightness of the Eurozone labour market will be seen by the ECB's hawks as further justification for cutting interest rates only cautiously and reduces the likelihood of a unanimous decision to ease again this month. That said, today's update sees the Eurozone RPI at minus 22 and the RPI-P at minus 9, both gauges showing overall economic activity still struggling to keep up with market expectations.

Consensus for August's unemployment rate is 6.4 percent, unchanged from July. Unemployment in the Eurozone has been running at record lows.

The unemployment rate measures the number of unemployed as a percentage of the labor force.

Unemployment data are closely monitored by the financial markets. These data give a comprehensive report on the state of the economy and its future direction. A rising unemployment rate can be a warning sign of hard times while a low rate can be a warning of inflation as wages are bid up to attract labor.

Unemployment data are expressed in both a numerical value and as a percentage of the labor force. Generally, the definition of those unemployed follows that of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). It states that an unemployed person is one between the ages of 15 to 74 years of age who was not employed during the reference week, had actively sought work during the past four weeks and was ready to begin working immediately or within two weeks. The unemployment rate is the percentage of unemployed persons over the total number of active persons in the labor market. Active persons are those who are either employed or unemployed.

Eurostat provides an unemployment rate for each EU country as well as for the EMU and EU as a whole. It should be noted that the unemployment rate for a country will frequently differ with that reported by the national statistics agency. That is because of the varying interpretations of the ILO definition by member states and Eurostat.