The employment rate in the EU reached a historic high of 74.6% in 2022, according to new data from Eurostat. But which regions are doing the best?
When looking at European employment rates on a map, it is easy to see the divide between northern and southern states.
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Commission, finds that after dividing countries into 242 basic regions (NUTS 2), two-fifths of the areas have an employment rate equal to or above 78%.
These areas are mainly concentrated in Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Malta, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
In the Finnish archipelago of Åland, Eurostat notes the highest employment rate, at 89.7%, and the second highest rate is recorded in the region of the Polish capital, Warsaw, where the employment rate employment is 85.4%.
The Dutch region of Utrecht and the region of Stockholm, capital of Sweden, follow these two areas, with an employment rate of 85.1%.
In contrast, in three regions of southern Italy, Eurostat finds that less than half of the population was employed in 2022.
These regions are Sicily (46.2%), Calabria (47.0%) and Campania (47.3%).
In some regions of Turkey, the employment rate is even lower than that of Italy: it is 32.8% in the cities of Mardin, Batman, Şırnak and Siirt.
To what extent have employment rates changed?
Among the regions studied, Eurostat finds that 9 out of 10 experienced an increase in employment rates between 2021 and 2022.
Among the five regions with the highest growth rates are four Greek regions: Epirus (+7.7 percentage points), South Aegean (+5.8), Crete (+5.7) and Central Greece (+ 5.4).
Strong growth is also seen in the Spanish Canary Islands, with an increase of 5.5 percentage points.
That said, the increase in employment rates has not been widespread, with a minority of states seeing a decline in the number of their citizens working.
The Polish region of Opole Voivodeship recorded a decrease of 1.5 percentage points, followed by the Spanish region of Melilla (-1.3), the German region of Lower Franconia (-1.2) and the French regions of Limousin (-1.0), Brittany and Guadeloupe (-0.9 each).
Unemployment falls, job offers remain high
Alongside the rise in employment, the latest figures from August 2023 also show that unemployment has fallen in the EU.
The two figures are clearly linked, but can also be influenced by the number of people who do not fit into either category, such as students or people caring for a loved one.
The unemployment rate in the EU was 5.9% in August 2023, compared to 6.0% in July 2023 and 6.1% in August 2022.
However, despite this promising trend, William Mitchell, professor of economics at the University of Newcastle in Australia, told Euronews that “unfilled vacancies now signal impending weakness”.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, which profoundly changed the labor market, most EU Member States experienced a sharp increase in job vacancies.
ADVERTISEMENTBy mid-2022, job vacancies in the EU have started to slowly decline again, but they remain much higher than pre-pandemic levels.
This suggests that there are mismatches between worker skills and employer demands, leading to the risk of lower productivity and competitiveness.
To remedy this, the European Union is committed to better anticipating changes in the labor market, facilitating professional mobility and improving workers’ ability to adapt.
Professor William Mitchell also drew attention to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) series of interest rate hikes.
He says the good employment figures suggest that “monetary policy changes have not had the impact that many economists believed”adding that “the real economy is not very sensitive to interest rate changes within the range we have observed”.
ADVERTISEMENTSome feared that rate hikes would lead to higher unemployment by triggering a reduction in consumer spending and investment, a scenario that has been avoided so far.
The ECB is expected to announce its next monetary policy decision on Thursday, with analysts expecting the bank to end its long streak of interest rate hikes.
