EU Unemployment Rate by Country (2025)
EU Unemployment Rate by Country, 2025: EU-27 average 6.0%, from 2.8% in Czechia to 10.5% in Spain. Eurostat LFS data for all 27 member states.
Data
| Country | Rate 2025 (%) | Rate 2024 (%) | YoY Change (pp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spain | 10.5 | 11.4 | -0.9 |
| Finland | 9.7 | 8.4 | +1.3 |
| Greece | 8.9 | 10.1 | -1.2 |
| Sweden | 8.8 | 8.4 | +0.4 |
| France | 7.7 | 7.4 | +0.3 |
| Estonia | 7.5 | 7.6 | -0.1 |
| Lithuania | 6.9 | 7.1 | -0.2 |
| Latvia | 6.9 | 6.9 | unchanged |
| Luxembourg | 6.5 | 6.4 | +0.1 |
| Denmark | 6.4 | 6.2 | +0.2 |
| Belgium | 6.2 | 5.7 | +0.5 |
| Italy | 6.1 | 6.5 | -0.4 |
| Romania | 6.1 | 5.4 | +0.7 |
| Portugal | 6 | 6.5 | -0.5 |
| Austria | 5.7 | 5.2 | +0.5 |
| Slovakia | 5.4 | 5.3 | +0.1 |
| Croatia | 4.9 | 5 | -0.1 |
| Ireland | 4.7 | 4.3 | +0.4 |
| Cyprus | 4.4 | 4.8 | -0.4 |
| Hungary | 4.4 | 4.5 | -0.1 |
| Netherlands | 3.9 | 3.7 | +0.2 |
| Slovenia | 3.9 | 3.7 | +0.2 |
| Germany | 3.8 | 3.5 | +0.3 |
| Bulgaria | 3.5 | 4.2 | -0.7 |
| Malta | 3.1 | 3.2 | -0.1 |
| Poland | 3.1 | 2.9 | +0.2 |
| Czechia | 2.8 | 2.6 | +0.2 |
About this Dataset
The EU27 unemployment rate held at 6.0% in 2025 — matching 2024 for the lowest level in the 17-year series and a reduction of 5.6 percentage points from the 11.6% aggregate peak recorded in 2013 during the sovereign debt crisis. The headline figure, however, conceals a labour market geography that remains highly fractured: Spain's 10.5% rate is nearly four times Czechia's 2.8%, a gap that carries material implications for sovereign fiscal capacity, ECB policy calibration, and cross-border workforce strategy.
At the 2013 crisis peak, unemployment reached 26.1% in Spain and 27.8% in Greece, the highest annual readings in either series. By 2025 both had fallen by more than 15 percentage points — yet Spain's rate is still the highest in the EU, sustaining a structural divergence that has persisted across three full economic cycles.
The data cover all 27 EU member states on an annual basis using the ILO-harmonised Labour Force Survey (LFS), sourced from Eurostat's UNE_RT_A dataset. Key methodological parameters:
- Frequency: Annual
- Age group: 15–74 years, total sex (all genders combined)
- Unit: Percentage of the economically active population (PC_ACT)
- Source aggregate: EU27_2020 (EU composition since 1 February 2020)
- Coverage: 2009–2025 (17 annual observations for the EU27 aggregate)
- Methodology: ILO-harmonised household survey, enabling cross-country comparability
The EU27 figure reported here is not restated whenever EU membership changes: Eurostat applies the current 27-country composition (EU27_2020) consistently back across the full 2009–2025 series, so year-on-year moves reflect actual labour-market change rather than a shifting country panel. Each national input is itself drawn from that country's own Labour Force Survey, standardised to the same ILO definition, age band (15–74) and unit (percentage of the economically active population) before being combined into the bloc-wide rate. That harmonisation is what allows Spain's 10.5% and Czechia's 2.8% to sit on the same 2025 table as directly comparable figures, rather than two numbers computed under different national conventions.
The 2025 cross-country distribution reveals three distinct clusters. The tight-labour-market group — Czechia (2.8%), Malta and Poland (both 3.1%), Bulgaria (3.5%), Germany (3.8%), and Slovenia and the Netherlands (both 3.9%) — faces structural labour shortages and persistent upward wage pressure. A mid-range cluster of 14 countries sits between 4% and 7%, broadly consistent with cyclical equilibrium. The high-unemployment tail — Spain (10.5%), Finland (9.7%), Greece (8.9%), Sweden (8.8%) — reflects a mix of structural dysfunction in southern Europe and post-monetary-tightening cooling in Nordic economies.
Finland stands out as the most significant mover in 2025. Finland's rate rose by 1.3 percentage points to 9.7% — the largest year-on-year increase in the EU — reflecting the lagged impact of European rate-tightening on a heavily indebted household sector and a continued construction-market correction. For strategy teams evaluating Nordic operations, this signals a near-term softening in wage growth momentum after several years of exceptional tightness.
Beyond Finland, Romania (+0.7pp, to 6.1%) and a tie between Belgium and Austria (+0.5pp, to 6.2% and 5.7% respectively) posted the next-largest increases — a pattern that points to a broader softening across parts of the Benelux-Alpine corridor and south-east Europe rather than an isolated national shock. The counter-movement was concentrated in the south: Greece posted the sharpest decline in the panel at -1.2 percentage points (to 8.9%), followed by Spain (-0.9pp, to 10.5%), Bulgaria (-0.7pp, to 3.5%), and Portugal (-0.5pp, to 6.0%). Spain's improvement continues a longer post-2013 convergence trend, though the country's rate remains nearly double the EU27 average.
Italy's 2025 rate of 6.1% is a multi-decade low, down from 6.5% in 2024, continuing a structural improvement that began after 2014. The convergence toward the EU average narrows the fiscal drag from social transfers and strengthens the debt sustainability case for Italian sovereign bonds — though the rate remains 2.3 percentage points above Germany's, and Italy's low labour force participation rate limits the structural interpretation of the headline decline.
Related data: Spain Unemployment Rate · Greece Unemployment Rate · Finland Unemployment Rate · Czechia Unemployment Rate · EU Youth Unemployment Rate · Spain Youth Unemployment Rate · EU Employment Rate by Country · EU Long-Term Unemployment Rate · EU NEET Rate (Youth) · EU Unemployment Rate Analysis