Man holding a tool at a machine.

In 2023, the EU’s employment rate stood at 75.3%, up 0.7 percentage points (pp) compared with 2022. This is the highest level in the entire available time series.

Among the EU regions at level 2 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 2), the Polish capital region of Warszawski stołeczny had the highest employment rate last year at 86.5%. The second highest rate was found in Bratislavský kraj in Slovakia (85.8%), while the third highest rate was observed in the German region of Trier (85.4%). 

By contrast, in 3 regions in southern Italy, less than half of the core working-age population was employed: Calabria (48.4%), Campania (48.4%) and Sicilia (48.7%). 

Source dataset: lfst_r_lfe2emprtn 

Highest regional disparities in Italy 

In 2023, Italy had the highest regional disparities with a coefficient of variation of 16.3%, ahead of Belgium (8.5%) and Romania (7.7%). The lowest regional disparities for employment rates, with a coefficient of variation of 2.0% or less, were recorded in Portugal, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands. 

All of the eastern and Baltic countries with multiple regions, as well as Denmark, Ireland, Spain and Sweden, reported that their highest employment rate was in their capital region. By contrast, Belgium, Germany and Austria had some of their lowest employment rates in the capital regions.

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Methodological notes 

  • The employment rate is the percentage of employed people (of a given age) relative to the total population (of the same age).
  • The employment rate was included as an indicator in the social scoreboard which is used to monitor the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights. The EU’s employment target is at least 78% of the population aged 20–64 should be in employment by 2030. 
  • In the map, the regions with rates already equal to or above the EU target of 78% are shown in shades of teal. In 2023, approximately 45% of EU regions (109 out of the 241 for which data are available) had already reached or surpassed this level. 

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