The eurozone unemployment remained on course of decline, dropping to a new record low in April, the European Union's statistics bureau Eurostat said on Friday.

The jobless rate in the 13-nation bloc sharing the same currency stood at 7.1 percent in April, further down from 7.2 percent in the previous month and much lower than 8.0 percent in April 2006.

It was the lowest level since the indicator was introduced in 1993.

Among the 13 member states, the Netherlands recorded the lowest unemployment, which was 3.3 percent.

Both Germany and France, the two largest economies in the bloc, saw improvement on the labor market. Jobless rate in Germany declined further from 7.0 percent in March to 6.7 percent in April, and in France from 8.7 percent to 8.6 percent.

In the 27-nation EU, unemployment also fell from 7.2 percent in March to 7.1 percent in April.

The Eurostat estimated that there were 16.7 million people unemployed in the EU in April, among which 10.6 million were in the euro zone.

As a comparison, jobless rate in the United States was 4.5 percent in April 2007, and the Japanese rate was 3.8 percent.

Source: Xinhua