The European Union’s unemployment rate remained unchanged in May 2025, holding at 5.9 percent, according to seasonally adjusted data released by Eurostat.

This marks no change from April’s figures, though compared to May last year, the rate dipped slightly by 0.1 percentage point.

Among EU member states, Malta and the Czech Republic posted the lowest unemployment rates, at 2.7 and 2.8 percent respectively. Both countries saw a modest increase of 0.1 percentage point compared to the previous month.

By contrast, Spain and Finland reported the highest unemployment levels within the bloc. Spain’s jobless rate reached 10.8 percent, while Finland followed with nine percent.

Across the eurozone, which covers countries using the single currency, the situation slightly worsened. The unemployment rate climbed to 6.3 percent, up from 6.2 percent in April, but still better than 6.4 percent recorded in May 2024.

In total, Eurostat estimates there were approximately 13.05 million unemployed people in the EU during May. Within the euro area, that figure stood at 10.83 million. Month-on-month, the number of jobless individuals in the EU rose by 48,000, with the eurozone contributing 54,000 to that increase.

On a year-on-year basis, however, unemployment numbers declined by 23,000 in the EU and 168,000 in the euro area.

The report also highlighted an uptick in youth unemployment. For individuals under 25 years old, the jobless rate rose by 0.1 percentage point, reaching 14.8 percent in the EU and 14.6 percent in the eurozone.

Eurostat’s methodology follows the International Labour Organization (ILO) standard, counting as unemployed those who have been actively looking for work in the past four weeks and are available to start within the next two weeks.

The Czech Republic’s unemployment figures, as published by Eurostat, are based on data from the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO). This differs from the data released by the Labour Office of the Czech Republic, which uses the number of registered job seekers.

According to the Labour Office, Czechia’s unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent in May, down from 4.3 percent in April, marking the lowest level recorded this year.

The CZSO, however, uses a labor force sample survey, making its figures more comparable at the EU level. This approach tends to report a lower unemployment rate than the Labour Office data, which only tracks those officially registered as job seekers.

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