The employment rate in the EU continued to rise in the second quarter of 2022, according to the latest figures published on Wednesday 28 September by the European statistics agency Eurostat.
It stood at 74.8%, up 0.3% compared to the first three months of the year.
This data corresponds to the share of employed persons in relation to the total population of working age (between 20 and 64 years old).
This upward trend is present in the majority of Member States, with significant disparities, however.
Lithuania is experiencing the strongest increase, with a gain of 1.6 percentage points.
Conversely, countries like Hungary and Slovenia are stagnating.
Croatia and Belgium are among the few countries where this figure is down (-0.5%).
France, for its part, experienced a very small gain of 0.1 point, rising from 73.8 to 73.9%, slightly below the Community average.
Paris thus remains far behind Germany, whose employment rate continues to progress, beyond 81%.
To console itself, it remains well ahead of Italy, which remains below 65%.
Decline in underemployment
At the same time, the share of underemployment is decreasing.
It fell from 11.9% of the extended active population aged 20 to 64, in the first quarter of 2022, against 11.5% in the second (-0.4 percentage points).
This figure includes all people with an unmet need for employment.
The main component is unemployment.
But we also find people in forced part-time work, people who are available but who are not looking for and, conversely, people who are looking for but not available.
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In France, the unemployment rate as defined by the ILO was thus almost stable in the second quarter of 2022 (+0.1 point) at 7.4% of the active population in France (excluding Mayotte), returning to the same level as in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to INSEE.