Filenews 11 December 2025 - by Theano Thiopoulou
Job vacancies are one of the important market indicators and reflect the needs of employers to meet needs in various sectors of economic activity.
Despite the fact that the European Commission has put in place policies to address the employment and social challenges in the EU, millions of jobs remain vacant.
According to Eurostat, the job vacancy rate in the EU varies by country and sector. The job vacancy rate (non-seasonally adjusted) in the euro area was 2.2% in the second quarter of 2025, down from 2.4% in the first quarter of 2025 and from 2.6% in the second quarter of 2024.
Across the EU, the job vacancy rate was 2.1% in the second quarter of 2025, down from 2.2% in the first quarter of 2025 and from 2.4% in the second quarter of 2024.
To explain that a job vacancy is considered to be a paid position that has been recently created, is vacant or is about to become vacant. According to Eurostat, this means that the employer is actively looking for a suitable candidate outside the company.
When calculating the job vacancy rate, both the number of job vacancies and the number of vacancies are taken into account in order to capture the total demand and vacancies. Basically, it measures the percentage of total positions that are vacant. For example, a percentage of 3% means that, if there are a total of 100 jobs, 97 are occupied and 3 are vacant.
Among EU countries, the highest job vacancy rates in the second quarter of 2025 were recorded in the Netherlands (4.2%), Belgium (3.9%), Austria (3.4%), Cyprus (3.3%) and Malta (3.2%). The lowest rates were observed in Romania (0.6%), Spain and Poland (both 0.8%), followed by Bulgaria (0.9%).
Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the job vacancy rate increased in 5 EU countries, remained stable in 3 EU countries and decreased in 19 EU countries. In addition to the Czech Republic, the largest decreases were recorded in Greece (-0.9 percentage points), Finland (-0.7 percentage points), Germany and Austria (both -0.6 percentage points). Increases were observed in Cyprus (+0.3 percentage points), Lithuania and Malta (both + 0.2 percentage points), followed by Bulgaria and Estonia (+0.1 percentage points in both).
Eurostat reports that the highest job vacancy rate in the EU was recorded for sales, marketing and development managers, at 8.4%. It means that these occupations had the highest unmet demand for labor, indicating potential difficulties in recruiting staff. This data is compiled in part using a new data source on online job postings (OJAs) and is therefore published as experimental statistics.
The next occupations with the highest job vacancy rates were manufacturing workers, secretarial clerks (7.3% each), salespeople (6.1%) and assistant cooks (6.0%).
Eurostat also clarifies that although professions in the public sector, such as healthcare workers and teachers, may face recruitment difficulties, they are less likely to appear online, meaning they rank lower or do not appear in this data. On the other hand, IT professions may be overrepresented in online job posting data.
