Unemployment in the EU

The unemployment rate in Spain is 7.7 percentage points higher than in Czechia.

In 2025, 6.0% of the labour force in the EU was unemployed. The labour force is everyone who has a job or is looking for one.

Figures for:: 2025.
Covers:: the whole year.
New data:: once a year.
Dataset updated:: 10 September 2026.

27 / 27 EU countries ranked

The ranking

In 2025, the unemployment rate ranged from 2.8% in Czechia to 10.5% in Spain.

Unemployment rate, %

2025 · aged 15 to 74

0.02.55.07.510.012.5%

Rank 1: Spain, 10.5 %

Rank 2: Finland, 9.7 %

Rank 3: Greece, 8.9 %

Rank 4: Sweden, 8.8 %

Rank 5: France, 7.7 %

Rank 6: Estonia, 7.5 %

Rank 7: Lithuania, 6.9 %

Rank 7: Latvia, 6.9 %

Rank 9: Luxembourg, 6.5 %

Rank 10: Denmark, 6.4 %

Rank 11: Belgium, 6.2 %

Rank 12: Italy, 6.1 %

Rank 12: Romania, 6.1 %

Rank 14: Portugal, 6.0 %

Rank 15: Austria, 5.7 %

Rank 16: Slovakia, 5.4 %

Rank 17: Croatia, 4.9 %

Rank 18: Ireland, 4.7 %

Rank 19: Cyprus, 4.4 %

Rank 19: Hungary, 4.4 %

Rank 21: Netherlands, 3.9 %

Rank 21: Slovenia, 3.9 %

Rank 23: Germany, 3.8 %

Rank 24: Bulgaria, 3.5 %

Rank 25: Malta, 3.1 %

Rank 25: Poland, 3.1 %

Rank 27: Czechia, 2.8 %

How to read: bars start at zero. Every country with a value is shown, ranked from highest to lowest.Source: Eurostat, Unemployment rates by educational attainment level and NUTS 2 region (lfst_r_lfu3rt).

About the data

The unemployment rate is the share of unemployed people in the labour force. The labour force is the employed plus the unemployed. By the International Labour Organization's guidelines, a person is unemployed if they are aged 15 to 74, were not employed in the survey's reference week, are available to start work within two weeks, and either looked for work in the past four weeks or found a job that starts within three months.

Counted: aged 15 to 74.

Eurostat: “The unemployment rate is the number of people unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.” (source)

EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), a sample survey of households run by the national statistical institutes.

How to read these numbers

Different definitions

Spain's and France's values from 2021 are marked by Eurostat as following a different definition (flag d): both countries still decide whether people on temporary lay-off count as employed by the rules used until 2020.

Sources and data

Eurostat, Unemployment rates by educational attainment level and NUTS 2 region (lfst_r_lfu3rt). Data updated 10 September 2026, retrieved 28 October 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.

Eurostat metadata · Eurostat methodology

The exact Eurostat API query

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/api/dissemination/statistics/1.0/data/lfst_r_lfu3rt?format=JSON&lang=en&age=Y15-74&freq=A&geo=AT&geo=BE&geo=BG&geo=CY&geo=CZ&geo=DE&geo=DK&geo=EE&geo=EL&geo=ES&geo=EU27_2020&geo=FI&geo=FR&geo=HR&geo=HU&geo=IE&geo=IT&geo=LT&geo=LU&geo=LV&geo=MT&geo=NL&geo=PL&geo=PT&geo=RO&geo=SE&geo=SI&geo=SK&isced11=TOTAL&sex=T&unit=PC

How every number in this story was computed