The labour market slack, which comprises all people who have an unmet need for employment and of which one of the main components is unemployment, amounted to 11.5% of the extended labour force aged 20-64 in the third quarter of 2022, also stable compared with the second quarter 2022.

This information comes from data on the labour market in the third quarter of 2022 published recently by Eurostat. This article presents only a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article.

Source datasets: lfsi_emp_q and lfsi_sla_q

While the employment rate remained stable in the EU, changes between the second quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2022 were observed across the EU Member States for which data were available. The highest increases were recorded in Bulgaria (+0.8 percentage points; pp), Belgium (+0.7 pp) as well as in Portugal and Cyprus (both +0.4 pp).

Source dataset: lfsi_emp_q

While employment rose in 9 EU Member States, it remained stable in Latvia and decreased in 16 Member States, with the biggest decreases recorded in Luxembourg and Ireland (both -0.8 pp) as well as in Germany, Croatia and Malta (all -0.5 pp).