EU Unemployment Rate by Country
Quarterly unemployment rates across eight EU member states — including the EU27 aggregate, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, and Sweden — from 2010 to Q4 2025. Primary input for sovereign credit analysis and ECB rate-path modelling.
Data
| Period | EU27 | YoY Change | Spain | Greece | Italy | France | Sweden | Germany | Netherlands |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q4 2025 | 5.9% | +0.2pp | 9.9% | 8.3% | 5.5% | 8.1% | 8.5% | 3.7% | 3.9% |
| Q3 2025 | 6.0% | +0.2pp | 10.5% | 8.2% | 5.6% | 7.9% | 8.2% | 3.9% | 3.9% |
| Q2 2025 | 5.9% | +0.0pp | 10.3% | 8.6% | 6.6% | 7.2% | 9.3% | 3.7% | 3.7% |
| Q1 2025 | 6.2% | -0.1pp | 11.4% | 10.4% | 6.8% | 7.5% | 9.3% | 3.7% | 4.0% |
| Q4 2024 | 5.7% | -0.4pp | 10.6% | 9.5% | 6.1% | 7.4% | 7.8% | 3.3% | 3.6% |
| Q3 2024 | 5.8% | -0.2pp | 11.2% | 9.0% | 5.6% | 7.6% | 8.0% | 3.5% | 3.7% |
| Q2 2024 | 5.9% | +0.0pp | 11.3% | 9.8% | 6.7% | 7.0% | 9.1% | 3.4% | 3.6% |
| Q1 2024 | 6.3% | +0.0pp | 12.3% | 12.1% | 7.7% | 7.6% | 8.8% | 3.4% | 3.8% |
| Q4 2023 | 6.1% | +0.0pp | 11.8% | 10.5% | 7.5% | 7.7% | 7.4% | 3.1% | 3.4% |
| Q3 2023 | 6.0% | -0.1pp | 11.9% | 10.8% | 7.3% | 7.5% | 7.2% | 3.1% | 3.6% |
| Q2 2023 | 5.9% | -0.2pp | 11.7% | 11.2% | 7.5% | 6.9% | 8.3% | 3.0% | 3.4% |
| Q1 2023 | 6.3% | -0.2pp | 13.4% | 11.9% | 8.3% | 7.2% | 7.8% | 3.1% | 3.7% |
| Q4 2022 | 6.1% | -0.4pp | 13.0% | 11.9% | 7.9% | 7.3% | 6.8% | 3.0% | 3.5% |
| Q3 2022 | 6.1% | -0.7pp | 12.7% | 11.7% | 7.7% | 7.3% | 6.5% | 3.2% | 3.7% |
| Q2 2022 | 6.1% | -1.1pp | 12.7% | 12.5% | 8.0% | 7.1% | 8.5% | 3.1% | 3.3% |
| Q1 2022 | 6.5% | -1.3pp | 13.7% | 13.8% | 8.8% | 7.5% | 8.2% | 3.2% | 3.6% |
About this Dataset
At Q4 2025, the EU27 unemployment rate stands at 5.9% — a level that would have been unimaginable at the 2013 crisis peak of 12.2%. The bloc-wide figure, however, obscures a structural fault line that has defined European labour markets for more than a decade: Germany and the Netherlands sit at 3.7–3.9%, while Spain and Greece remain above 8–10%, a gap that compresses sovereign credit spreads, distorts ECB policy calibration, and depresses long-run potential output across the southern periphery.
The north–south unemployment spread peaked at approximately 21 percentage points in 2013. By Q4 2025 it had narrowed to 6.2 percentage points — significant convergence, but still large enough to create materially different fiscal dynamics across the currency union.
The dataset covers eight key geographies on a not-seasonally-adjusted (NSA) quarterly basis from Q1 2010, sourced from Eurostat’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) via the UNE_RT_Q dataset:
- Frequency: Quarterly (NSA), released approximately 60–90 days after the reference quarter
- Age group: 15–74 years, total sex
- Unit: Percentage of the economically active population
- Methodology: ILO-harmonised household survey across all EU member states
- Coverage: Q1 2010–Q4 2025 (64 quarterly observations per geography)
- Geographies: EU27 aggregate, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Sweden
France and Sweden present an analytically interesting middle case. France’s 8.1% rate in Q4 2025 reflects sticky structural unemployment partially explained by a large youth cohort and rigid formal employment contracts that suppress hiring at the margin. Sweden, despite operating outside the eurozone, has seen unemployment drift upward from a pre-pandemic low, reaching 8.5% in Q4 2025 — a function of monetary tightening transmitted through a heavily indebted household sector and a cooling housing market.
For sovereign credit analysts, the most consequential data point in this series is Italy’s gradual convergence. Italy’s Q4 2025 rate of 5.5% represents a multi-decade low, achieved through combination of post-pandemic labour demand recovery, strong tourism and manufacturing export performance, and the Reddito di Cittadinanza reform’s restructuring of benefit conditionality. Whether this level is structurally sustainable or driven by cyclical factors — particularly given Italy’s high public debt load and low trend productivity — remains the central question for BTP spread analysis over the next economic cycle.