r/europe • u/slicheliche • 2d ago
Map Employment rate in the EU in 2024 (a counter statistic to the unemployment rate)
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u/Ikcenhonorem 2d ago
80% is basically full employment. So everybody who want to work, have a job. As in the working force - people from 16 to pension, there is always a significant group, usually about 30%, that does not work for some reason, no matter of job opportunities. Example for that were housewives in the past. Many students too. Some people get significant passive income. Some cannot work due disabilities. And some simply do not want to work.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes and also, take for instance Greece which has a lower unemployment rate than Finland but also a much lower employment rate - it simply means that more people in Finland actually have a job, and more people in Finland register for unemployment and there's much fewer NEETs or people who work under the table.
Italy used to have a lower unemployment rate than today many times throughout its history but there were also very few women in the workforce + loads of people (particularly in the South) who would find all sorts of creative strategies to dodge regular employment. That's becoming less and less common nowadays so the job market is actually a lot healthier despite the higher unemployment rate on paper.
Having a low unemployment rate is good but you always need the employment rate to get an accurate picture of the general state of the local job market.
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u/TheBlacktom Hungary 1d ago
The problem is within the 80%. Not all work is productive.
Some countries have schemes to do pointless work to increase the statistics. The corporate world have their own "bullshit jobs" (se the David Graeber book).
The EU gives out money for all kinds of reasons: sometimes a lot of people are employed to do the paperwork of such tenders and make partially or fully fake and/or pointless projects. See the "lombkoronasétány" story for example. There are countless other examples.
Entire businesses can be questionable. How productive is someone manufacturing or selling cigarettes? Many other examples, for example startups. In the EU there are many startups who are working on projects funded and being kept alive by government grants without any real customers. Technologies pointlessly being developed. In contrast in the US more private VC and angel money is being invested, so the natural selection of the startups is more organic.-1
u/BeWaryOfCrab 1d ago
1 in 5 people does NOT have a job, this is FAR from "full employment"
Shove that Orwellian new speak straight up your behind!
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u/qalmakka Europe 2d ago
In Italy there is a large number of people that work irregularly without a contract. It's better than a few years ago, but still pretty common
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u/bolmer Chile 2d ago
Employment rate includes the informal jobs.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
Not in the Eurostat definition.
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u/aplqsokw 1d ago
You didn't search for any definition and you just made that up. This is based on a survey that is simply asking people if they worked at least 1 hour for profit. It does not ask if there was a legal contract.
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u/alito 2d ago
Can you point to where they distinguish between formal and informal jobs? I went through the methodology at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=EU_labour_force_survey_-_methodology and through the questionnaires linked from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=EU_labour_force_survey_-_documentation&stable=0&redirect=no#Explanatory_notes_and_user_guide_for_the_core_variables. I don't see anywhere where they distinguish between the two
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u/Reatrd Romania 2d ago
Romania is weirdly low. I imagine that having a few million people abroad (many of them not registered as having left by the Ro authorities) might play a part.
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u/artuuurr 2d ago
thats also interesting in my case, im from PL but live in DE but never registered as left, so i wonder if i show up in the statistics
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u/Creepy-Evidence-6568 2d ago
Freelancers account 17% of the workforce; 4th largest in the EU. There's your explanation.
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u/Asmodeian_ 2d ago
Norway is NOT an EU member state.
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u/dxps7098 2d ago
Neither are Iceland, Switzerland or Turkey, but they participate in Eurostat and are included in the Labour force statistics.
"Reference area
European Union, Euro area, EU-Member States, Candidate Countries, EFTA Countries (except for Liechtenstein), USA and Japan. Data for Cyprus refer only to the areas of Cyprus controlled by [..]"
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/lfsi_esms.htm
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u/PrestigiousJelly6478 2d ago
This is mostly due to differences in female labor force participation rate.
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u/Luca_Changretta_ 2d ago
Can someone explain why the rate is so low in Turkey?
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u/Falkenayn 1d ago
Most older(35+) woman don't work . Because before last 30 years most of them don't get education after high school or early by their families. This has basically lasting impact for employment rate because house wife dosnt count as employment.
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u/strajeru Romanistan 1d ago
In Romanistan is even worse. There are a lot of youth who does not work and are not registered by the state.
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u/Haxorzist 2d ago
Wait Employment and unemployment aren't direct opposites?
Well, I guess it's time to doom over yellow this time :P.
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u/WaIkingAdvertisement 2d ago
Employment counts people in work. Unemployment counts people not in work, who are looking for work. That leaves a large group of people, for whatever reason, that are not in work, and not looking for work. (Students for example, but not children or pensioners, as these stats are limited to usually 16-65 year olds)
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u/mechanical_fan 2d ago edited 2d ago
Consider a country of 10 people: if all 10 want to work and 9 are working and 1 is looking for a job, the employment rate is 90% and the unemployment is 10%. Now imagine the almost the opposite: 1 person wants to work and that person finds a job (9 are okay just chilling at home, not searching for jobs either), this results in 10% employment and but 0% unemployment.
(Chilling at home is an extreme, but normal reasons for not wanting to be part of employment statistics are: informal work, being a housewife/househusband, being student, living on inheritance/savings, early retirement, living in parents household, self employed in some weird way, etc)
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
Employment = working
Unemployment = not working but actively looking
Labour force = employment + unemployment + neither (i.e. not working and not looking for work).
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u/Sium4443 Italia 🇮🇹 2d ago
No, if you cant or dont want to work then you are neither employed nor uneployed
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u/Not_to_be_Named 2d ago
The problem is not having a job, the problem is in countries like portugal that have more than 60% of the working force receiving the minimum wage or their wage being paid by social securities via protocols. For example here in portugal you may take a bachelors degree in like history and your only available job is working at the supermarket as a cashier (most cases in Portugal) or a non relatable area job. Just because you are working does not mean that your country is an example to follow.
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u/Unicycldev 2d ago
Why would anyone reasonably expect employment when getting a degree in history.
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u/UniquesNotUseful United Kingdom 2d ago
I don’t care what degree someone has, it just shows that someone can self learn to some level and has a level of maturity. If someone has worked in the field then degrees are irrelevant.
Best developer I had did an art degree, you hire to fill the gaps in a team.
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u/Not_to_be_Named 2d ago
The 2 best developers I trained where chesmistry major, they were the best not because they knew more than the others, they were the best because they had to run to garantee survival, and beacause of that they invested more of their time to actually learn. On the other side the worst ones I had were Computer Science major that were so stick to someone else doing their job that when they were alone doing tasks they were always pushing everyone backwards and missing deadlines
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u/Not_to_be_Named 2d ago
It’s not about being a history degree, or any other degree, it’s about how costly it’s for the economy when you have someone that costed thousands to the country so that their return is negative to everyone, having low quality jobs does not make the country thrive more, it makes it that when a crisis happen everything is going to collapse, and those with a low quality job will be the most vulnearable to becoming unemployed an generate a giant snow ball of unemployment, debt, etc... I rather have a mid level of unemployment with high quality jobs with great finance return than a low level unemployment with everyone one living paycheck to paycheck on minimum wage with the fear of the next day becoming unemployed.
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u/Ok-Drink-1328 2d ago
ahhhhhh it's one of those statistics that the unemployed are the 5% but the employed are the 75%, i see i see
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u/artuuurr 2d ago edited 2d ago
honestly i think the statistics are embarassing. In US they are at 4% unemployment for labor force.. what do you mean we have countries like Finland with 10% unemployment/ labor force. It's really bad
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
Great example - the US have a lower employment rate than Finland (and many other European countries), meaning fewer people actually hold a regular job. Not only that but it has yet to recover from Covid: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/employment-rate
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u/AnOopsieDaisy 2d ago edited 2d ago
According to the US Beareau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate is just 4.2%.
The unenployment rate only includes people who are actively seeking work. The employment rate includes everyone of working age, whether or not they’re looking for work.
You're using the wrong statistic to describe the availablity of jobs. The US has a higher rate of available jobs than Finland for those that seek them.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago edited 2d ago
The US has a higher rate of available jobs than Finland for those that seek them.
That's not a conclusion you can make based on this number. Given that the employment rate in the US is substantially lower there is a good chance that a percentage of the workforce who would otherwise be actively looking for work is not, because of several possible reasons. So the "higher availability" is simply a statistical artifact. This is common for instance in Italy or Greece where a large number of young people is simply not doing anything (NEETs). It can also mean for instance that females have a low participation rate for cultural reasons (although even in that scenario they typically have some type of informal occupation) but that's not really the case of the US in 2025.
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u/AnOopsieDaisy 2d ago
Yes it is: Finland has dobule the unemployment rate of the US. You're now basing your argument on speculation about motives for those not working. Employment rate ≠ job availability. The coverage of potential reasons is too wide to be factually applicable to the job market.
Those young Americans are usually in college or grad school. That's not doing nothing, even though it will look like that on employment rate.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
Employment rate ≠ job availability.
Which is not what I said.
What I said is, a lower unemployment rate ≠ a better, healthier, or more prosperous job market. And a lower unemployment rate ≠ more jobs available overall.
Those young Americans are usually in college or grad school.
So are young Finns for that matter. In fact, the US has a substantially higher rate of young NEETs.
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u/AnOopsieDaisy 2d ago edited 2d ago
A higher unemployment rate strongly suggests less available jobs, and therefore a less healthy job market. It's that simple. You're extrapolating on conjecture.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
A lower unemployment rate strongly suggests less available jobs, and therefore a less healthy job market. It's that simple.
Assuming you meant higher, no, it literally does not. It is not conjecture; it is the basic reason why the employment rate is calculated and also the reason why it is typically considered a more reliable metric to get a sense of the overall job market especially when you're comparing different countries with widely different social contexts, attitudes towards work, gender norms etc. It is the exact opposite of conjecture; it is demonstrated by openly available and widely circulated data that country A having a lower unemployment rate than country B does neither automatically imply nor strongly suggest that country A has a better job market. If anything, your assumption that it does is a conjecture.
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u/artuuurr 2d ago
so US has 60% employment rate and a 4.2% unemployment rate? what a weird statistic
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
No it's not. One of the many reasons why that is is that the US have a low and stagnating employment rate among females.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
I mean if I were an underemployed American I would probably try and stay under the table given how pitiful social welfare is.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
No, not necessarily. Depends on the specific methodology. In the case of Eurostat, it doesn't.
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u/Naturalnumbers 2d ago edited 2d ago
Weird decade-old statistic...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LREM25FEUSQ156S
u/artuuurr, the 60% US employment rate is age 16+, whereas these employment rates are age 20-64. for US age 20-64, it's about 75.5%.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
That's 25 to 54, not 20 to 64. In Finland it's 80.3%.
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u/Naturalnumbers 2d ago edited 2d ago
The link I shared is for women 25-54, but if your point relies on a decrease in women 20-24 and 55-65, then it's really just reflecting aging and college attendance (and is in any case still very out of date as you can see with the prime age employment rate).
The 75.5% employment rate is for 20-64. 25-54 is 80.4%.
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u/slicheliche 2d ago
The 75.5% employment rate is for 20-64. 25-54 is 80.4%.
I think you're getting confused with the numbers because the link you shared literally says the rate for 25-54 is 75.5%. It's also been nearly flat since 1999-2000, so not sure how that would disprove the point of the female employment rate stagnating since decades.
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u/Naturalnumbers 2d ago
Women 25-54 is 75.0%
Men 25-54 is 89.2%
All sexes 20-64 is 75.5%
The link you originally showed had the decrease after the 2008 recession, but didn't show the ensuing recovery back to near the all-time high.
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u/bolmer Chile 2d ago
77% of the labor force working in Finland it's better than the ~70% that the US have.
The World bank have this numbers https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS?locations=US-FI 79,9% vs 73,7%
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u/Naturalnumbers 2d ago
That 65ish statistic for the US is 16+, where as the 77% statistic for Finland is 20-64. If you align the age limits it's about 75.4% for the US.
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u/neromoneon 2d ago
It’s worth noting that Eurostat defines anyone who worked just one hour in a week as being employed.