{"id":141022,"date":"2025-10-23T17:44:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141022\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T17:44:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T17:44:15","slug":"unused-labour-potential-in-the-eu-11-7-in-2024-news-articles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/141022\/","title":{"rendered":"Unused labour potential in the EU: 11.7% in 2024 – News articles"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2024, labour market slack in the EU<\/a> accounted for 11.7% of the extended labour force, representing 26.7 million people aged 15 to 74 available for work but not participating in the labour market to their potential. This included unemployed<\/a> and underemployed people<\/a>, those seeking a job even though they are not immediately available to work<\/a> and those immediately available to work but not seeking<\/a> a job. With minor fluctuations, labour market slack in the EU has been decreasing over the decade, falling from 18.6% in 2015.<\/p>\n

Among EU countries, Spain recorded the highest labour market slack in 2024 (19.3% of the extended labour force), followed by Finland (17.9%) and Sweden (17.8%)<\/p>\n

In contrast, labour market slack was the lowest in Poland (5.0%), Malta (5.1%) and Slovenia and Hungary (both 6.3%).<\/p>\n

\n

Source dataset: lfsi_sla_a<\/a><\/p>\n

Unemployment: the largest part of labour market slack<\/p>\n

A detailed breakdown of labour market slack shows that 5.7% of the extended labour force was unemployed, 2.7% was available to work but not seeking employment, 2.4% of people were underemployed part-time workers and 0.9% were seeking employment but not immediately available to work.<\/p>\n

Unemployed people made up most of the labour market slack in 23 EU countries, with the highest shares in Spain (10.9%), Greece (9.9%), Finland and Sweden (7.9% each).\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, there were some exceptions. In Ireland and the Netherlands, the majority of slack came from underemployed people working part-time (4.4% and 4.9%, respectively). In Czechia, the highest share was among people seeking work but not immediately available to start (3.1%), while in Italy, most were available to work but not seeking employment (7.3%).<\/p>\n

\"Labour<\/a><\/p>\n

Source dataset: lfsi_sla_a<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2024, labour market slack in the EU accounted for 11.7% of the extended labour force, representing 26.7…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,5720,179,18,19,17,12996,5723],"class_list":{"0":"post-141022","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-data-driven-news","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-lfs","15":"tag-population-and-social-conditions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115424727197350150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}