Archive:Key figures on the changes in the labour market
Data extracted in June 2023
Planned article update: 5 July 2023
Highlights
This article addresses the most significant changes in the labour market between the first quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, with focus on people outside the labour force, meaning neither employed nor unemployed.
This overview of some relevant facts and changes in the labour market aims to answer the following questions: was the increase in the employment rate the same for younger and older workers at all levels of education? How many people not in education are outside the labour force and what is their attachment to the labour market?
The analysis is carried out for the European Union (EU) as a whole, for the 27 EU Member States individually, for three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and for one candidate country (Serbia). It makes use of non-seasonally adjusted quarterly data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS).
Full article
Trends in employment
People by labour status are analysed using the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) data. A closer look at the various categories acting on the labour market shows that age, sex as well as level of education are key factors for employment analysis but are also important for unemployed people or those outside the labour force.
Largest increases in the employment rate reported by women aged 55-64 years and by women with a low level of education
In Q1 2023, 7 out of 10 people aged 15-64 years (69.9 %) were employed in the EU, 4.8 % were unemployed and 25.3 % were outside the labour force (see Figure 1). The employment rate in Q1 2023 varied significantly among the different population groups as shown in Figure 1: there was a large gap (9.4 percentage points (pp)) between the sexes with 65.2 % of employed women and 74.6 % of employed men. The same gap was recorded for those outside the labour force, with 30.1 % of women and 20.5 % of men not employed, not searching for a job, or not available to start within the following two weeks.
Considering the age, Figure 1 shows the employment rate in Q1 2023 by age group and distinguishes people aged 15-29 years participating in formal education in the last 4 weeks and those who were not. This consideration is highly relevant when dealing with the employment rate of young people. Indeed, exactly half of people aged 15-29 years are still in education in the EU, which significantly affects the denominator of the employment rate (i.e., the total people of this category).
In Q1 2023, the employment rate in the EU was:
- around 25 % for people aged 15-29 years participating in formal education (25.5 % for men against 24.8 % for women);
- 70.4 % and 77.7 % for women and men aged 15-29 years not participating in formal education;
- 77.6 % and 87.9 % for women and for men aged 30-54 years;
- 57.1 % and 69.2 % for women and for men aged 55-64 years.
The older the people, the wider the gender employment gap.
Looking at unemployment in Q1 2023, the share of unemployed women in the total women aged 15-64 years (4.6 %) was slightly lower than the male share (4.9 %). Unemployment reached its highest value among men aged 15-29 years not participating in formal education (10.6 %) and the lowest among men aged 15-29 years still in formal education (2.4 %). Furthermore, in Q1 2023, almost three-quarters of women and men aged 15-29 years participating in formal education were outside the labour force (neither employed nor unemployed). Considering people aged 15-29 years not in formal education, it was 1 in 5 women (20.5 %) and 1 in 10 men (11.7 %) who were outside the labour force. In the same quarter, EU accounted for 17.6 % of women and 7.5 % of men aged 30-54 years outside the labour force and 27.3 % of men and 39.9 % of women aged 55-64 years.
The level of education also significantly affects the employment rate. Figure 1 compares people aged 30-64 years by level of education and labour status in the EU. Lower levels of education are associated with lower employment rates. In Q1 2023, people with a low level of education reported the lowest employment rates: 46.3 % of women and two-thirds of men were employed (68.5 %). People with a medium level of education follow, with 71.3 % employed women and 83.4 % of employed men. The highest rates were recorded among women and men with a high level of education, with 85.6 % and 91.2 % respectively.
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Between Q1 2022 and Q1 2023 as shown in Figure 2, the employment rate increased by 0.8 pp for all people aged 15-64 years. However, the increase in employment was more pronounced for women aged 55-64 years (+1.8 pp), for men aged 15-29 years not participating in formal education and for men aged 55-64 years (+1.5 pp for both categories). While men aged 15-29 years recorded higher increases than women, it is worth highlighting that it was the opposite for those aged 30-54 years and 55-64 years.
Also, as clearly shown on Figure 2, the increase in the employment rate of young women not in education and in the rate of women aged 30-54 years was accompanied by a similar decrease in the share of people outside the labour force while the share of unemployed people recorded minor change or none. For men aged 15-29 years not in education and women and men aged 55-64 years, the increase in the employment rate was also recorded with a greater decrease in the share of people outside the labour force than in the share of unemployed people. Only men aged 30-54 years compensated a higher employment rate by a greater decrease in the unemployment rate than in the share of people outside the labour force.
Moreover, considering the level of education among people aged 30-64 years, the increase in the employment rate from Q1 2022 to Q1 2023 was more pronounced for women with a low level of education (+1.5 pp). The lowest increases have been recorded by women and men with a high level of education, +0.4 pp and +0.3 pp respectively.
15 out of 27 EU Member States recorded a lower employment rate among people aged 15-29 years not participating in education in Q1 2023 compared with Q1 2022
At national level (see Figure 3), in Q1 2023, the employment rate of people aged 15-64 years was the highest in the Netherlands (82.3 %), Malta (78.7 %) and Germany (77.5 %). On the contrary, countries with the lowest employment rates were Greece (60.8 %), Italy (60.9 %), Romania (62.9 %) and Spain (64.2 %). As shown in Figure 3, those four countries also have the lowest employment rates of people aged 15-29 years not in education and aged 30-54 years. The employment rate of people aged 15-29 years participating in education and the rate of people aged 55-64 years varied to a much greater extent among countries than the rate of the other categories. An example of this is that during Q1 2023, the employment rate of people aged 55-64 years varied from its highest point of 77.9 % in Sweden to its lowest of 44.5 % in Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the employment rate of people aged 15-29 years still in formal education varied from 73.9 % in the Netherlands to 2.2 % in Romania.
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Moreover, it is worth noting that between Q1 2022 and Q1 2023, the employment rate of people aged 15-64 years increased in all but two EU Member States (see Figure 4), namely in Lithuania (-0.4 pp) and Denmark (-0.1 pp). Looking at the specific age groups, a decrease in the employment rate was recorded in
- 8 EU Member States for people aged 15-29 years participating in formal education;
- 15 EU Member States for people aged 15-29 years not participating in formal education;
- 6 EU Member States for people aged 30-54 years (namely Portugal, Luxembourg, Denmark, Lithuania, Malta and Belgium)
- 2 EU Member States for people aged 55-64 years (namely Cyprus and Luxembourg),
Decrease in temporary contracts
As shown in Figure 5, the share of temporary contracts among employees is one of the indicators that reveals the differences in the employment patterns among EU Member States. Temporary contracts accounted for 15 % or more of all employees aged 15-64 years in the Netherlands (27.4 %), Spain (18.2 %), Portugal (17.6 %), Italy (16.6 %), France (15.3 %), Poland (15.2 %) and Finland (15.0 %) but for less than 5 % in Lithuania (2.0 %), Romania (2.3 %), Latvia (2.7 %), Estonia (2.9 %), Bulgaria (3.5 %) and Slovakia (4.3 %).
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Age plays a key role in the share of temporary contracts among employees. In fact, in Q1 2023 temporary contracts affected :
- Almost two-thirds of employees aged 15-29 years still participating in formal education (63.5 %),
- Almost one-fourth of employees aged 15-29 years and no longer participating in formal education (24.1 %),
- Almost one-tenth of employees aged 30-54 years (9.3 %),
- 6.1 % of employees aged 55-64 years.
The younger the people, the more frequent the contracts are temporary. This pattern was reflected in most EU Member States with few exceptions (e.g., Ireland, Luxembourg, Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria for those aged 55-64 years).
Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain registered the highest shares of temporary contracts among employees aged 15-29 years not participating in formal education with respectively 42.6 %, 42.2 %, 41.6 % and 35.9 % of employees being employed under such contracts. Those four countries also recorded the highest shares among people aged 30-54 years: 17.8 % in the Netherlands, 15.2 % in Spain, 13.2 % in Italy and 12.9 % in Portugal. Furthermore, 1 in 10 employees aged 55-64 years also had a temporary contract in Spain (10.5 %), in the Netherlands (10.4 %) and in Poland (10.2 %).
From 14.2 % of employees with a temporary contract in Q1 2022 to 13.6 % in Q1 2023
In Q1 2023, 13.6 % of employees were employed under temporary contracts in the EU, this is 0.6 pp lower than in Q1 2022. More than half the EU Member States (16 out of 27) also recorded a decrease in temporary contracts. The greatest declines were reported by Spain (-7.6 pp), Slovenia (-2.1 pp) and Denmark (-1.3 pp) and the greatest increases by Estonia (+2.3 pp), Croatia (+1.7 pp) and Portugal (+1.2 pp) (see Figure 6).
Figure 6 also shows that, at EU level, only young people participating in formal education recorded an increase in the share of employees with temporary contract (+2.6 pp). This share decreased by 2.0 pp for those aged 15-29 years not in education, by 0.8 pp for those aged 30-54 years and by 0.4 pp for employees aged 55-64 years. However, this age pattern was not reflected in all EU Member States: while the share of temporary contracts among young employees fell by 16.3 pp for those not in education in Spain, it increased by 3.0 pp in Croatia. The same finding to a lesser extent was observed for employees aged 30-54 years (-7.0 pp in Spain and + 2.2 pp in Estonia) and for those aged 55-64 years (-5.7 pp in Malta and +2.0 pp in Luxembourg).
Recent job starters with temporary or permanent contracts?
In Q1 2023, 6 % of employed people started their job in the last three months, slightly more than half of them had a temporary contract
In Q1 2023, 12.3 million people aged 15-64 years, in the EU, had started a new job, at most 3 months earlier. The recent job starters stood for 6.0 % of the total employment in Q1 2023 against 6.2 % in Q1 2022. In the EU, in the last quarter of 2022, 54.6 % of recent job starters aged 15-64 years had a temporary contract, 40.0 % had a permanent contract while 5.4 % started a new job as self-employed or contributing family workers (5.1 %) or did not inform about their contract typology (0.2 %). Compared with Q1 2022, the share of temporary contracts in recent job starters decreased by 3.2 pp while the share of permanent contracts increased by 3.9 pp. Recent job starters with temporary contract accounted for 3.3 % of employed people in Q1 2023 against 3.6 % in Q1 2022 and recent job starters with a permanent contract accounted for 2.4 % of employed people in Q1 2023 against 2.3 % in Q1 2022.
- The share of recent job starters in the total employment was significantly higher among people aged 15-29 years, and in particular among those participating in formal education: 25.5 % and 24.6 % of total employed women and men had just started their job in the last 3 months. Moreover, the vast majority started their new job with a temporary contracts (74.4 % for women and 77.2 % for men).
- Among people aged 15-29 years and not participating in formal education, 14.5 % of employed women had recently started their job in the last 3 months against 12.5 % of employed men. The share of temporary contracts in the total recent job starters was 54.8 % for women and 55.3 % for men.
- The share of employed people aged 30-54 years starting a new job was significantly lower than for younger people: 4.7 % of employed women and 3.8 % of employed men aged 30-54 years were recent job starters in Q1 2023.
Less than half of recent job starters in this age category had a temporary contract (48.1 % of women and 42.7 % of men in Q1 2023 against 54.8 % and 48.7 % in Q1 2022). There were 5.8 % and 7.4 % starting a job as self-employed or contributing family workers (against 6.6 % and 8.2 % in Q1 2022). These decreases were offset by an in increase in the share of permanent contracts among recent job starters: +7.6 pp for female recent job starters and +6.7 pp for male recent job starters.
- Recent job starters aged 55-64 years represented only 2.1 % of employed women and 1.8 % of employed men in the same age category. The same pattern as people aged 30-54 years concerning the type of contract is observed.
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Concerning the level of education, people aged 30-64 years with a low level of education recorded the highest share of recent job starters in the total employment, 5.3 %, against 3.3 % for those with a medium level of education and 3.5 % for those with a high level of education.
Looking at the EU Member States as displayed in Figure 8, the highest shares of recent job starters in the total employment aged 15-64 years were found in Denmark (9.4 %), Finland (8.6 %), the Netherlands (8.4 %) and Spain (8.1 %) while the lowest shares were found in Romania (1.8 %), Slovakia (2.1 %) and Bulgaria (2.4 %). In addition, among those who had started a new job in the last 3 months, the highest shares of temporary contract were recorded in the Netherlands (77.4 %), Poland (74.6 %), Portugal (69.0 %), Italy (65.1 %), Croatia (63.6 %) and Spain (62.0 %) and the lowest shares of temporary contracts were reported by Lithuania (14.9 %), Latvia (19.4 %), Malta (19.8 %) and Cyprus (24.0 %).
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The downward trend observed at the EU level was also visible in 20 EU Member States. The largest decreases were recorded in Slovenia (-1.8 pp in Q1 2023 compared with Q1 2022), Cyprus (-1.4 pp) and Belgium (-1.1 pp). Meanwhile, the largest increases were recorded in Luxembourg (+1.0 pp, Sweden (+0.6 pp) and Austria (+0.5 pp) (see Figure 9).
Source data for tables and graphs
Methods and definitions
All figures in this article are based on non-seasonally adjusted quarterly results from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS).
Data sources
Source: The EU-LFS is the largest European household sample survey providing quarterly and annual results on labour participation of people aged 15 years and over as well as on persons outside the labour force. It covers residents in private households. Conscripts in military or community service are not included in the results. The EU-LFS covers the same target populations and uses the same definitions in all countries, which means that the results are comparable between the countries. The EU-LFS is an important source of information about the situation and the trends in the national and EU labour markets. Each quarter, around 1.8 million interviews are conducted throughout the participating countries to obtain statistical information for some 100 variables. Due to the diversity of information and the large sample size, the EU-LFS is also an important source for other European statistics such as Education statistics or Regional statistics.
Coverage: The results from the survey currently cover all European Union Member States, the EFTA member states Iceland, Norway and Switzerland, as well as the candidate countries Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye. For Cyprus, the survey covers only the areas of Cyprus controlled by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.
In the analysis by economic activity and occupational group, only those activities and groups with more than 100 000 employed people at EU level are taken into account.
European aggregates: EU refers to the totality of the EU of 27 Member States. If data are unavailable for a country, the calculation of the corresponding aggregates takes into account the data of the same country for the most recent period available. Such cases are indicated.
Country notes
In the Netherlands, the 2021 LFS data remains collected using a rolling reference week instead of a fixed reference week, i.e., interviewed persons are asked about the situation of the week before the interview rather than a pre-selected week.
Definitions
- The concepts and definitions used in the EU-LFS follow the guidelines of International Labour Organisation (ILO). In particular, employed people comprise:
(a) persons who during the reference week worked for at least one hour for pay or profit or family gain;
(b) persons who are not at work during the reference week but had a job or business from which they are temporarily absent.
- The LFS employment concept differs from national accounts domestic employment, as the latter sets no limit on age or type of household and also includes the non-resident population contributing to GDP and conscripts in military or community service but excludes the resident population working for non-resident enterprises.
- The gender employment gap is the difference between the employment rate of men and the employment rate of women, it is expressed in percentage points (pp).
- Recent job starters are employed people who started a new job within the last 3 months.
More information
More information on the LFS can be found via the online publication EU Labour Force Survey, which includes eight articles on the technical and methodological aspects of the survey. The EU-LFS methodology in force from the 2021 data collection onwards is described in methodology from 2021 onwards. Detailed information on coding lists, explanatory notes and classifications used over time can be found under documentation.
Context
2021 was marked by the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and by an employment rate recording an upward trend. In the first semester of 2022, despite Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the start of the energy crisis, employment was still going up. However, the third quarter of 2022 showed the early signs of slowdown which were visible for young people aged 15-29 years and people aged 25-54 years. Nevertheless, older workers aged 55-64 years still recorded a substantial increase in their employment rate as the duration of working life has become longer in many countries. Furthermore, in the last years, it has been of interest to follow the development of the population according to the the three labour statuses i.e., employment, unemployment and people outside the labour force. Indeed, the variation in employment has been in some quarters mainly reflected by changes among people outside the labour force instead of unemployment.
Direct access to
- New measures of labour market attachment - Statistics in focus 57/2011
- Labour force survey in the EU, EFTA and candidate countries — Main characteristics of national surveys, 2020, 2022 edition
- Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2020, 2022 edition
- EU labour force survey — online publication
- European Union Labour force survey - selection of articles (Statistics Explained)
- LFS main indicators (lfsi)
- Unemployment - LFS adjusted series (une)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment - annual data (lfsi_sup_a)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment - quarterly data (lfsi_sup_q)
- Unemployment - LFS adjusted series (une)
- LFS series - Detailed annual survey results (lfsa)
- Total unemployment - LFS series (lfsa_unemp)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment by sex and age (lfsa_sup_age)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment by sex and educational attainment level (lfsa_sup_edu)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment by sex and citizenship (lfsa_sup_nat)
- Total unemployment - LFS series (lfsa_unemp)
- LFS series - Detailed quarterly survey results (lfsq)
- Total unemployment - LFS series (lfsq_unemp)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment by sex and age (lfsq_sup_age)
- Supplementary indicators to unemployment by sex and educational attainment level (lfsq_sup_edu)
- Total unemployment - LFS series (lfsq_unemp)
Methodology
Publications
- EU labour force survey — online publication
- Labour force survey in the EU, EFTA and candidate countries — Main characteristics of national surveys, 2020, 2022 edition
- Quality report of the European Union Labour Force Survey 2020, 2022 edition
- New measures of labour market attachment - Statistics in focus 57/2011
ESMS metadata files and EU-LFS methodology
- Employment and unemployment (Labour Force Survey) (ESMS metadata file — employ_esms)
- LFS series - detailed quarterly survey results (from 1998 onwards) (ESMS metadata file — lfsq_esms)
- LFS series - detailed annual survey results (ESMS metadata file — lfsa_esms)
- LFS ad-hoc modules (ESMS metadata file — lfso_esms)
- LFS main indicators (ESMS metadata file — lfsi_esms)
- LFS regional statistics (ESMS metadata file — reg_lmk)