Public employment services (PES) are perfectly placed to assess local labour markets. Their day-to-day business provides them with excellent information on trends, giving them unique opportunities to match skills for employers, as well as to help train employees for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The distinct potential of these services has been bundled in the European Labour Market Barometer in order to obtain an outlook on their development across Europe.  

The July European Labour Market Barometer fell for the third time in a row, but overall the outlook remains positive in the EU. While the unemployment component of the barometer signalled a slight increase in unemployment, employment is expected to continue rising in 2023 - albeit at a slower pace.  This means that labour markets in Europe will remain stable, even when factoring in the effects of the energy crisis, war in Ukraine and overall economic downturn. 

Run by the European Network of Public Employment Services and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), the European Labour Market Barometer is based on a survey of the local or regional employment agencies in 17 PES services. A leading indicator of employment and skills trends in labour markets, the survey has been carried out jointly by the employment services and the IAB since June 2018. Agencies are asked to assess both the unemployment and employment outlook for the next three months, resulting in two components and one barometer for each PES. The European barometer is then derived from these national scores in the form of a weighted average. 

Evaluations conducted by the IAB demonstrate that the European Labour Market Barometer has a high predictive power in signaling the future development of employment and unemployment. This makes it a crucial indicator for assessing the prospects of the labour market on a European level for policymakers, institutions, labour market professionals and researchers as well as the media and the general public.