Man in front of a machine.

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.

Labour market slack and employment rate in the EU, Q1 2013 to Q1 2025. Bar and line chart - Click below to see full dataset.

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).

Change in employment rate, Q1 2025 compared with Q4 2024. Bar chart - Click below to see full dataset.

Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q

For more information

Methodological notes

  • The extended labour force is the total number of people employed, unemployed, and those seeking work but not immediately available, plus those available to work but not seeking. In this article, data cover population aged 20 to 64. 
  • This article uses quarterly and seasonally adjusted data from the EU labour force survey (EU-LFS) data.

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