The line chart compares the unemployment rates in the European Union (all workers) with the proportions in three groups, Professional, Manual and Self-employed from 1990 to 1999.
Overall, all, Manual and Self-employed workers tended to increase throughout the period given. Meanwhile, Professional employees ended the period with the similar proportion as its starting percentage.
Regarding Manual workers, which fluctuated over the decade given, this doubled from 7% to slightly over 14% from 1990 to 1994, before decreasing to just over 8% in 1996. This category remained stable at this figure in the next two years and increased by nearly two percentage points in the last year of the period. Although this group started the period with the highest percentage, it finally came third in three cohorts. As for Professional workers, this remained at the lowest level throughout the decade. This fell slightly in the first two years but increased steadily by five percentage points from 1992 to 1997, and dropped to the same proportion as it was in 1990, roughly 2%.
Turning to all workers and those who were self-employed, these two groups followed the similar pattern from 1990 to 1997. All workers and Self-employed workers both rose slightly by one percentage point from 6% and 5%, respectively. From 1991 to 1992, these groups saw a similar downward trend before both rising substantially to remarkable over 12% in 1997. While Self-employed workers levelled off at this level, All workers fell by over two percentage points, from over 12% to exactly 10%.