Sweden Jobless Rate Stable At 8.5%

(RTTNews) - The Swedish unemployment rate remained stable in February after rising in the previous two months, figures from Statistics Sweden showed on Friday.

The unadjusted jobless rate stood at 8.5 percent in February, unchanged from January.

In the same month last year, the unemployment rate was 8.2 percent.

The number of unemployed people rose to 480,000 in February from 479,000 in January.

Young people between the ages of 15 and 24 accounted for 156,000 unemployed people, or 23.2 percent of the workforce, the agency said.

Data showed that the employment rate increased to 68.1 percent from 67.6 percent, representing 5.174 million employed people.