In the EU, the employment rate of people aged 20-64 stood at 75.4% in the second quarter of 2023, an increase of 0.1 percentage points (pp) compared with the first quarter of 2023.
Labour market slack – encompassing those with unmet employment needs, a large part of which includes unemployed individuals – amounted to 11.2% of the extended labour force aged 20-64 in the second quarter of 2023 (-0.1 pp compared with the first quarter 2023).
This information comes from data on the labour market in the second quarter of 2023 published today by Eurostat. 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 first and the second quarter of 2023 varied across the EU countries. The highest increases were recorded in Slovenia (+1.3 pp), Portugal (+1.1 pp) and Latvia (+1.0 pp).
Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q
While employment rose in 20 EU countries, it remained stable in Estonia and decreased in 6 EU countries, with the biggest decreases recorded in Bulgaria (-0.8 pp), Belgium (-0.7 pp) and Romania (-0.6 pp).