Consumer prices in the 17 nations sharing the euro rose 2.4 percent in July on an annual basis, the EU's statistics office Eurostat said on Tuesday, maintaining a level first touched in May as Brent crude fell sharply earlier in the year.

Inflation is seen coming into line with the European Central Bank's target of just below 2 percent by the end of the year, and ECB President Mario Draghi said in early July the rate is slowing faster than forecast.

That allowed the ECB to cut its interest rates a quarter point to a record low of 0.75 percent and its deposit rate to zero earlier this month.

Brent crude is back to around $105 a barrel after dropping to as low as $90 a barrel in late June and oil prices continue to be supported by worries about supply from sanctions-hit Iran.

Iran and the West have been at odds over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, resulting in crippling sanctions that have cut the flow of Iranian oil into international markets.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected inflation at 2.4 percent in July for the euro zone, but steady, rather than falling, consumer prices are of little bonus to European households suffering what is set to be the bloc's second recession in just three years.

Another 123,000 people were out of work in euro zone in June, Eurostat said in a separate release, putting the unemployment rate at 11.2 percent of the working population, a new euro-era high. That number was the same as May, after Eurostat revised up the data for that month from an earlier reading of 11.1 percent.

But the number also disguised wide divergences, with unemployment as low as 4.5 percent in Austria and 24.8 percent in Spain, the highest level in the bloc.

Spain slid deeper into recession in the second quarter as a tough new round of austerity to head off the budget crisis that threatens the euro affected both overall demand and the prices consumers have to pay for goods.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott)

• A Permanent Economic Emergency