Labour Market Tightness Across the EU

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This table compares job vacancy rates across European countries, showing how hard it is for employers to fill open posts. The figures come from Eurostat's quarterly job vacancy statistics. Each row shows the vacancy rate alongside the underlying counts of vacant and occupied posts.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, Cyprus had the highest job vacancy rate in the EU at 3.4%, and Romania the lowest at 0.6% — a gap of 2.8 percentage points.

#13.4%CyprusJob vacancy rate
#180.6%RomaniaJob vacancy rate
#111.4%CroatiaJob vacancy rate
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Cyprus3.4%Belgium3.2%Malta3.2%Lithuania2.7%Latvia2.7%Germany2.3%Czechia1.9%Slovenia1.8%France1.7%Portugal1.5%Croatia1.4%Ireland1.4%Luxembourg1.4%Greece1.2%Slovakia1.2%Bulgaria0.9%Spain0.9%Romania0.6%
#Job vacancy rateJob vacanciesOccupied posts
1Cyprus3.4%11,294318,913
2Belgium3.2%117,8573,535,791
3Malta3.2%7,849237,974
4Lithuania2.7%31,6371,158,160
5Latvia2.7%19,272705,795
6Germany2.3%878,58136,931,083
7Czechia1.9%68,7573,532,921
8Slovenia1.8%11,642650,832
9France1.7%275,94815,664,465
10Portugal1.5%47,7863,157,725
11Croatia1.4%15,2941,108,310
12Ireland1.4%30,3002,087,900
13Luxembourg1.4%6,416446,123
14Greece1.2%25,8212,113,706
15Slovakia1.2%16,6771,365,943
16Bulgaria0.9%17,4321,958,520
17Spain0.9%131,28213,869,687
18Romania0.6%28,7334,644,892

Methodology

Figures come from Eurostat's quarterly job vacancy statistics (dataset jvs_q_nace2), reference quarter Q4 2025 (as of 31 December 2025). The job vacancy rate is the number of vacancies divided by the sum of vacancies and occupied posts. The vacancy and occupied-post counts are absolute numbers of posts, not thousands. Values for Bulgaria, Spain, Romania, Ireland, Latvia and Malta are provisional (Eurostat flag p); the figures for France use a definition that differs from the standard (Eurostat flag d). No currency conversion applies to this dataset.

Sources