The given line chart illustrates how the unemployment rate changed in the European Union with three different kinds of workers namely Professional, Manual and Self-employed over a 10-year period starting from 1990.
Overall, the unemployment tendency of all workers generally underwent an alarming growth throughout a period, with increases seen in all categories of workers except for professionals. It is noteworthy that manual workers was the highest figure prior to the year 1995 while the percentage of unemployed self-employed workers retained its top position over the following five years.
In the first 6 years, there was a similarity between the percentages of unemployment of self-employed workers, all employees when starting respectively at 6% and 5.5%, and then these figures rose slightly by 0.3% in 1991 followed by a decline in 1992. Next, these proportions grew significantly to 12% and nearly 10.8% correspondingly in 1995. While manual workers showed its unemployment rate, with roughly 7% in 1990, increased substantially to 9% and then peaked at 14% before falling down in 1995. The figure for unemployed professional workers decreased slightly from 2% to 1.7% in 1992, which saw a gradual rise to 4% in 1995.
In terms of the later period, the figure for self-workers rose minimally to 12.2% and maintained its state until 1999 whereas that of all workers surpassed manual workers in 1995 and reached a peak of 12.2% before decreasing to 10%. The unemployment rate of manual workers continually went down to 8.2% and stayed unchanged in 1998 which then stood at nearly 9.8% in 1998. On the other hand, in spite of a sustainable increase throughout 6 years ending in 1997, unemployed professional workers got back the previous position(around 2% in 1990) in 1999.