The share of people in work across the EU rose to 76.1% in 2025, the highest level recorded since 2009, according to new labour market data.
The figure covers people aged 20 to 64 and corresponds to 197.7 million employed people, Eurostat reported on Friday.
The employment rate — the proportion of the age group who are in work — was up by 0.3 percentage points from 2024 and 0.8 points from 2023.
Across individual EU countries, the highest employment rates in 2025 were recorded in Malta (83.6%), the Netherlands (83.4%) and Czechia (82.9%).
The lowest were in Italy (67.6%), Romania (69.0%) and Greece (71.0%).
Men’s employment rate higher than women’s in most countries
Men had a higher employment rate than women in every EU country except Lithuania in 2025, Eurostat said.
The EU employment rate for men was 80.9%, with the highest levels in Malta (89.1%), Czechia (88.2%) and the Netherlands (87.2%).
The lowest rates for men were in Belgium (76.4%), Croatia (76.8%) and Finland (77.0%).
For women, the EU employment rate was 71.3%, with the highest levels in Estonia (81.4%), Lithuania (80.3%) and Sweden (79.8%).
The lowest rates for women were in Italy (58.0%), Romania (59.5%) and Greece (62.3%).
The employment gap between men and women across the EU was 9.6 percentage points in 2025.
The largest differences were in Italy (19.1 points), Romania (18.7 points) and Greece (17.4 points), while the smallest were in Estonia (0.5 points) and Lithuania, where women’s employment rate was 0.6 points higher than men’s.
