EU’s employment rate grew above 76% in 2025

In 2025, 76.1% (197.7 million people) of the EU's 20 to 64-year-olds were employed, the highest share recorded since the start of the time series in 2009. The employment rate was up 0.3 percentage points (pp) compared with 2024 and 0.8 pp compared with 2023.

Among EU countries, the highest employment rates were recorded in Malta (83.6%), the Netherlands (83.4%) and Czechia (82.9%). The lowest rates were recorded in Italy (67.6%), Romania (69.0%) and Greece (71.0%).

This information comes from the data on the labour market published today by Eurostat. This article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source dataset: lfsi_emp_a

Higher employment rates for men than for women

In 2025, in all EU countries, except for Lithuania, men had a higher employment rate than women.

The employment rate for men in the EU was 80.9%. Among EU countries, the highest rates were registered in Malta (89.1%), Czechia (88.2%) and the Netherlands (87.2%), while the lowest shares were observed in Belgium (76.4%), Croatia (76.8%) and Finland (77.0%).

For women in the EU, the employment rate stood at 71.3%, with the highest level found in Estonia (81.4%), Lithuania (80.3%) and Sweden (79.8%). Italy (58.0%), Romania (59.5%) and Greece (62.3%) recorded the lowest shares.

Source dataset: lfsi_emp_a

The gap in employment rates between men and women was 9.6 pp in the EU. The largest differences in employment rates were registered in Italy (19.1 pp), Romania (18.7 pp) and Greece (17.4 pp), while the smallest differences were recorded in Estonia (0.5 pp), Lithuania (-0.6 pp), Finland (1.3 pp) and Latvia (1.9 pp).