The unemployment rate across the eurozone hit a fresh record in May, as the recession continued to affect workers around the region and young people again suffered most.

The eurozone jobless rate rose to 12.1% in May, up from 12.0% in April, according to EU statistics office Eurostat. The youth unemployment rate was almost double that, at 23.8%, as 3.5 million under-25s were unemployed in May. In Spain and Greece the youth unemployment rate was as high as one in two.

The rise in unemployment was driven by increased joblessness in countries at the heart of the crisis, including Spain, Italy and Ireland. As the eurozone languishes in its longest-ever recession, the number of people out of work across the currency bloc rose by 67,000 in May to 19.2 million.

Seventeen members of the eurozone have higher unemployment rates than a year ago, and 10 have lower rates.

Economists had forecast an even higher unemployment rate of 12.3% for May in a Reuters poll. They warned the unemployment crisis could well get worse before it gets better.

"An end to the eurozone labour market downturn is not yet imminent. Indeed, the employment expectations indices from the European commission's business survey are still at levels consistent with further increases in unemployment. However, with the recession across the eurozone petering out, the peak in unemployment should not be too far away either," said Martin van Vliet at ING Financial Markets.

There was very limited cause for optimism in Eurostat's slight downward revisions to its earlier data – it had previously estimated the eurozone jobless rate at 12.2%.

Once again, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in Austria (4.7%), Germany (5.3%) and Luxembourg (5.7%), and the highest in Spain (26.9%) and Greece (26.8% in March 2013, the most recently available data).

Cyprus, which was dragged into a bailout crisis this year, suffered the biggest annual rise – from 11.4% in May 2012 to 16.3% this May. And Slovenia, which is fighting to avoid taking a bailout, has seen its jobless rate increase from 8.6% a year ago to 11.2%.