Abstract
For the most of the NMSs the data are related to municipal or microregional level providing a quite detailed snapshot of the regional pattern in the particular countries. According to the resulting pattern, two basic groups of the NMSs can be identified.
The first group consists of the countries where the global crisis induced a significant differentiation among until recently relatively well-performing municipalities, microregions or districts (i.e. regional units that were before the crisis exhibiting below average rate of unemployment). Generally, there were two basic types of until recently well performing functions in these countries – metropolitan regions but also some of the regions with smaller urban centres.
While metropolitan regions mostly remained affected only moderately, the crisis manifested strongly in the formerly successful regions with the smaller urban centres.