EU Employment Rate Hits 76.1% in 2025, 1.9 Points Shy of 2030 Goal

Q: Could the celebrated EU employment boom actually be masking severe gender pay gaps and a massive regional economic divide?

Yes. The record EU employment rate is real, but it does not mean the labour market is broadly equal or evenly healthy. The headline number for 2025 was 76.1% employment among people aged 20–64, just below the EU’s 78% target. But that average hides an extreme regional spread: from 86.9% in Warszawski stołeczny to 36.9% in Mayotte, a gap of about 50 percentage points. Large clusters of weak regions remain in southern Italy, Greece, Spain, Romania and France’s outermost territories. Calabria, Campania and Sicilia were near 50%, while Mayotte and Guyane were far lower than mainland EU norms. That points to a deep structural divide, not a uniformly strong labour market. It also hides a gender gap. Eurostat’s 2025 employment data show men’s employment at 80.9% and women’s at 71.3%, a 9.6-point difference. On pay, the EU’s unadjusted gender pay gap was still 11.1% in 2024, meaning women earned on average 11.1% less per hour than men. The gap is much wider in some strong-employment countries: Czechia, whose capital Praha is among Europe’s top-performing regions, still had a gender pay gap of 18.5%. Estonia was even higher at 18.8%. So the employment boom is best seen as incomplete progress. More Europeans are in work, but the gains are concentrated in stronger regions and do not automatically translate into equal pay, equal participation or similar job quality across the bloc.

1 articles · Updated · European Commission · Oct 6

76.1% of EU residents aged 20-64 were employed in 2025, the highest rate since Eurostat’s series began in 2009.
That left the bloc 1.9 percentage points below its 78.0% employment target for 2030, with 115 of 244 regions already at or above that goal.
Six regions topped 85%, led by Poland’s capital region Warszawski stołeczny at 86.9%, followed by Praha at 86.0%.
64 regions still sat below 74.0%, including 11 French, 11 Italian, 11 Greek and 11 Spanish regions; Mayotte posted the EU’s lowest rate at 36.9%.
The regional split shows employment gains are broadening across northern and central Europe, while weaker labor markets remain concentrated in parts of southern Europe and some outermost regions.