In the fourth quarter of 2024, the employment rate of people aged 20-64 in the EU stood at 75.9%, stable compared with the third quarter of 2024.
Labour market slack – all persons who have an unmet need for employment, including unemployed people – amounted to 10.8% of the extended labour force aged 20-64 in the fourth quarter of 2024 (a decrease of 0.1 percentage points (pp) compared with the third quarter of 2024).
This information comes from data on the labour market in the fourth quarter of 2024 published today by Eurostat. This article presents only a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on EU labour market.
Source datasets: lfsi_emp_q and lfsi_sla_q
Between the third and the fourth quarter of 2024, Greece and Luxembourg (each +0.8 pp) as well as Lithuania, Malta and Slovenia (each +0.5 pp) registered the highest increases in the employment rate among the 15 EU countries where employment rose. The employment rate remained stable in Estonia and Hungary and decreased in 10 EU countries, with the biggest decreases recorded in Ireland (-0.6 pp), Finland, Italy and Latvia (each -0.4 pp).
Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q
