In the first quarter of 2025, the employment rate of people aged 20-64 in the EU stood at 76.1%, up from 76.0% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Labour market slack – all persons who have an unmet need for employment, including unemployed people – amounted to 10.9% of the extended labour force aged 20-64 in the first quarter of 2025 (an increase of 0.1 percentage points (pp) compared with the fourth quarter of 2024).
This information comes from data on the labour market in the first quarter of 2025 published today by Eurostat. This article presents only a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.
Source datasets: lfsi_emp_q and lfsi_sla_q
Between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, Ireland (+0.9 pp), Italy (+0.7 pp), Hungary, Sweden, Greece and Portugal (each +0.4 pp) registered the highest increases in the employment rate among the 17 EU countries where employment rose. The employment rate remained stable in Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and decreased in 7 EU countries, with the biggest decreases recorded in Estonia (-0.5 pp), Romania and Poland (each -0.4 pp) as well as in Lithuania (-0.3 pp).
Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q
