In the EU, the employment rate of people aged 20-64 stood at 74.5% in the first quarter of 2022, representing an increase of 0.5 percentage points (pp) compared with the fourth quarter of 2021.
The labour market slack, which comprises all people who have an unmet need for employment and of which one of the main components is unemployment, amounted to 11.9% of the extended labour force aged 20-64 in the first quarter of 2022, down from 12.3% in the fourth quarter 2021 (-0.4 pp).
This information comes from data on the labour market in the first quarter of 2022 published by Eurostat today. This article presents only a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.
Source datasets: lfsi_emp_q and lfsi_sla_q
Changes in the employment rate between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 varied across the EU Member States. The highest increases were recorded in Greece (+1.8 pp), Luxembourg (+1.1 pp) and Latvia (+1.0 pp).
While employment rose in 24 EU Member States, it decreased in Lithuania (-0.3 pp), Denmark ( 0.5 pp) and Malta (-0.6 pp).
Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q
For more information:
- Statistics Explained article on EU labour market - quarterly statistics
- Dedicated section on the EU Labour Force Survey
- Statistics Explained article on EU labour force survey
- Statistics Explained article on EU labour force survey - correction for breaks in time series
- Database on EU Labour Force Survey
- Education Corner workbook on the labour market
Methodological notes:
- The extended labour force is the total number of people employed plus unemployed, plus 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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