The employment rate of people aged 20-64 in the EU stood at 75.7% in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 0.2 percentage points (pp) compared with the fourth 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 first quarter of 2024 (stable compared with the fourth quarter of 2023).
This information comes from data on the labour market in the first quarter of 2024 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
Between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, the employment rate varied across the EU countries. Croatia (+1.8 pp), Slovenia (+1.3 pp) and Bulgaria and Greece (both +0.9 pp) registered the highest increases among the 15 EU countries where employment rose. The employment rate remained stable in Italy and Latvia and decreased in 10 EU countries, with the biggest decreases recorded in Cyprus, Estonia and Lithuania (all -0.5 pp).
Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q