The line graph above compares the proportion of unemployment in three categories including professional workers, manual workers, and self-employed workers with the means of all workers in Eurpean Union.
Overall, the figure for professional workers always stays below the average line while that for self employed worker are always higher than the average most of the time. Manual workers group recorded some notable changes during the period, going up and down.
In 1990 the stats for unemployment rate in the manual workers group was 6%, highest out of all the groups and continued to increase for the next 5 years. Despite being over the average line during the first half of the period, the percentage of unemployment in the manual workers group started to decline from its peak of more than 14% in 1994 and dipped below the means at roughly 10.6% from 1995. Eventually, it hitted the bottom at around 8.2 % before recovering to nearly 9.7% in 1999.
The figure for self-employed workers started at around 6% and plummeted to approximately 5% in 1992, leaving a narrow gap of few points above the means. However, the figure started to soar and peaked at around 12.5% in 1996 and remained the same onward. In contrast, the figure for professional workers started at nearly 2% in 1990 and peaked at roughly 5.5% in 1997 although it never exceeded the figure for all workers.