BRUSSELS — A deteriorating economy in the European Union is expected to drive unemployment to new highs this year in countries including Spain and Portugal that already are feeling acute pain, the Union’s top economics official warned on Friday.

The new forecasts stood in stark contrast with figures from the United States on Friday that showed that more new jobs were created in April than expected, which pushed the unemployment rate to a four-year low. While American job creation is still slower than in a typical recovery, the new data could ease concerns of a sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy.

In Europe, far from delivering relief, the outlook presented by Olli Rehn, the Union’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, stoked further concerns that unemployment risked becoming endemic and could eventually cause social upheaval.

Unemployment is expected to reach 11.1 percent across the European Union this year and hit 12.2 percent in the euro zone. It is expected to remain at those levels for much of 2014, according to the Union’s spring forecast, which was released Friday. That picture is distinctly worse compared with 2012, when 10.5 percent were without jobs across the Union and 11.4 percent in the euro area.