Public spending cuts and collapsing business confidence have sent unemployment in the eurozone to a record 16 million people, up 587,000 on the same month in 2010.

Official figures compiled by Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency, show the heavy toll taken on the workforce by austerity measures and the slowdown in the eurozone economy during 2011.

Unemployment across the 17-member single currency area hit 16.4 million as of November 2011. The unemployment rate – the proportion of the workforce without a job – has risen only slightly over the past 12 months, to 10.3%; but many workers have given up on finding a job.

In bailed-out Greece, the unemployment rate in November stood at 18.8%, up from 13.3% in November 2010; while Spain had the highest unemployment rate in Europe, at 22.9%. In Germany, however, still the motor of the European economy, and as yet relatively unscathed by the downturn, the rate declined, from 6.7% in November 2010 to 5.5% a year later.

The sharp divide between the strongest members of the eurozone and its recession-hit periphery underlines the tough challenge facing politicians in finding a solution to the crisis that all their voters are willing to accept.

Young workers have been hit disproportionately hard by the deterioration in the labour market, the figures reveal, with youth unemployment rates much higher than those for the workforce as a whole. In Spain, 49.6% of under-25s were without a job; in Greece, it was 46.6%.

Rising unemployment was not confined to the single currency area, however: Eurostat calculates that 23.7 million people were out of work across the EU as a whole in November, an increase of 723,000.

Separate figures also released by Eurostat on Friday showed that retail sales declined by 0.8% in the eurozone – and 0.6% in the wider EU – in November, compared with a month earlier, suggesting that consumers are starting to tighten their belts as confidence is undermined by the continuing political turmoil.

EU leaders will hold a series of meetings in the coming weeks in a bid to strike a deal to underpin the single currency and prevent strains in financial markets becoming a full-blown credit crunch.

• This article was amended on 10 January 2012 to correct Germany's November unemployment figures for 2010 and 2011. These were given as 9.1% and 8.1%. But this was the rate Eurostat gave for people aged under 25, not the whole population.