Europe's labor market is more agile in the second quarter of 2023
The European Commission has released a new labor market survey conducted by Eurostat. The indicators in it do not differ so much from the first quarter's results, but a positive dynamic is still observed. This suggests that the slack in the labor market has begun to decline.
In the second quarter of this year, 195 million people were employed in the European Union. The seasonally corrected overall employment rate was 75.4%, 1 percentage point higher than in the previous period. At that time it was 75.3%.
Accordingly, the number of persons without a job also fell by 1 p.p. to 11.2% of the full labor force or 23.9 million people.
Of course, the performance of the states is uneven. 16 states showed a decrease in the labor market slack down, 10 — an increase. The most significant fluctuations were recorded in Greece, Spain, and Croatia, where labor market slack down decreased by 0.9-1%. The strongest increase was recorded in Luxembourg with 1.3%. At the same time, however, the Grand Duchy ranks 7th in terms of employment growth.
Unfortunately, it is too early to talk about a stable trend of unemployment reduction, but there are conditions for its formation. Now it will be important to wait for the statistical data for the 3rd quarter, but we will probably get them in October.
