Manufacturing labourers saw the biggest rise in the EU job vacancy rate between 2019 and 2023, increasing by 4.2 percentage points.
Experimental statistics partly based on online job advertisements found the next largest increases were for sales, marketing and development managers (up 3.0 percentage points), other sales workers (up 2.8), transport and storage labourers (up 2.5) and other clerical support workers (up 2.4), Eurostat announced in a release on Wednesday.
A job vacancy rate measures the share of jobs that employers are trying to fill.
The largest falls over the same period were for life science technicians and associate professionals (down 2.6 percentage points), followed by database and network professionals (down 1.7), software and applications developers and analysts (down 1.5), hotel and restaurant managers (down 1.1) and handicraft workers (down 1.0).
Vacancy rates fell for some tech roles, but remained above average
A lower job vacancy rate does not necessarily mean an occupation is shrinking, Eurostat noted.
For database and network professionals, the job vacancy rate fell by 1.7 percentage points to 5.1% in 2023, but remained above the all-occupation average of 2.4%, while the share of employees in that occupation increased by 0.2 percentage points between 2019 and 2023.
Software and applications developers and analysts also recorded a lower vacancy rate — down to 6.9% in 2023 — while their share of employees rose by 0.5 percentage points over the period.
Some occupations with rising vacancy rates saw their share of employees fall, including transport and storage labourers (down 0.2 percentage points) and other sales workers (down 0.1).
