PARIS — European stocks and the euro fell sharply on Friday after disappointing employment data from both sides of the Atlantic.


The jobless rate in the 17-nation euro zone reached 11 percent in March and April, the highest since the start of the data in 1995, Eurostat, the European statistical agency, said in Luxembourg. The previous record had been 10.9 percent in February, Eurostat said, after it revised the March figure upward from the 10.9 percent initially estimated.


“We have an economy that’s freezing up, it’s clearly not creating jobs,” Peter Dixon, global equities economist at Commerzbank in London, said. “But right now policy makers’ main concern is to ensure that the peripheral countries’ governments and banks can stay afloat. Given that, the real economic data is taking a back seat.”


But before long, he said, unemployment “is going to be a major problem for those countries,” as it rises to the top of the political agenda and further complicates the financial problems.


For the overall European Union, made up of 27 nations, the jobless rate was 10.3 percent in April, up from 10.2 percent in March. The data disguise massive internal variation, from Spain’s 24.3 percent down to Austria’s 3.9 percent. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, had a jobless rate of 5.4 percent.


The European figures contrasted with April unemployment of 8.1 percent in the United States and 4.6 percent in Japan.


U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up, the Labor Department said Friday. The dismal U.S. jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering.


The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April, the first increase in 11 months.


Investors were awaiting the results of Ireland’s fiscal compact referendum, but early indications were that the measure would pass.


Irish voters, already tired of austerity measures that have weighed heavily on their economy, on Thursday cast ballots on whether to back the European Union’s fiscal compact, an agreement to tighten budget rules.


Early tallies showed votes running about 60 percent in favor of the pact, versus 40 percent against, with a final tally expected by late afternoon local time.


“We are very, very confident,” Reuters quoted Lucinda Creighton, the country’s European affairs minister, as saying Friday. “We’ll have to wait another half an hour to see how the tallies are looking, but so far so good.”


Paul Murphy, a Socialist member of Parliament, said it “looks like the game is over. If it’s a ‘yes,’ which I think it will be, it’s no endorsement of this government, it’s no endorsement of what’s in this treaty and it’s no endorsement of austerity. People are scared out there.”


The Irish Times reported that only about half of the electorate had voted in the referendum.


While a rejection of the treaty would be yet another setback for the ailing euro, it would not doom the treaty.


“Ireland does not have a veto,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London, wrote in a research note, noting that only 12 out of the 17 euro members have to ratify the new treaty for it to come into force. “Europe could thus deal with a ‘no.”’


A “yes” vote would strengthen Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in negotiations with other European leaders over how to save the euro and might pave the way for new action from the European Central Bank. The E.C.B. and the German central bank, the Bundesbank, saw the new fiscal rules as the basis for their December interventions to defuse the crisis in December, Mr. Schmieding said, and an “Irish ‘yes’ would make it easier for the E.C.B. to step up its response to the new wave of Euro crisis soon.”