BRUSSELS, June 2 (Reuters) - Euro zone unemployment jumped in April to its highest level in nearly 10 years, data showed on Tuesday, boding ill for any quick recovery from the worst economic recession since World War Two.
The unemployment rate in the 16-nation euro zone rose to 9.2 percent from March's 8.9 percent as 396,000 people lost their jobs, bringing the number out of work to 14.579 million, the European Union statistics office said.
The figure, above the 9.1 percent expected by economists in a Reuters poll, was the highest since September 1999, signalling the real economy has yet to see the glimmers of optimism appearing in sentiment surveys.
In the entire 27-country European Union, unemployment rose to 8.6 percent from March's 8.4 percent, hitting its highest level since the start of 2006.
Spain had the highest unemployment rate in the EU at 18.1 percent, up from 17.3 percent in March, closely followed by Latvia on 17.4 percent, up from 16.1 percent.
In Germany, the euro zone's biggest economy, unemployment rose to 7.7 percent from 7.6 percent and in France, the second-biggest, to 8.9 percent from 8.8 percent. (Reporting by Jan Strupczewski, editing by Dale Hudson)