Employment is more or less steadily growing throughout the EU, but it is far from the Lisbon targets of an overall employment rate of 70% in 2010 and of 67% in 2005. In some countries with very slow growth (for instance in Italy and the UK), the figures reflect the decline of the total population rather than the creation of new jobs. In other countries, like France and Hungary, job growth is either stagnating or declining.
Employment rates by countries and sex Source: Eurostat
The map shows that unemployment may be considered a predominatly central-European phenomenon, whereas being far from the geographical centre of the EU does not seem to be a problem.
While 1.25 million new jobs were created in the EU-25 between 2004 and 2005, the unemployment rate remained the same, and in total figures, more around 200.000 people more were unempoyed.
One trend seems to be a levelling of unemployment rates at least within the EU-15: While Spain did best in combatting unemployment (decreasing it from 11.5 % to 11.0 % between 2003 and 2004) some of the countries with the lowest unemployment rates experienced a growth in unemployment over the same period (Luxembourg from 3.7 % to 4.8 %; the Netherlands from 3.7 % to 4.6 % and Sweden from 5.7 % to 6.5 %).
At 14.3%, unemployment in the EU-10 was still very high in 2004. Levelling seems to be one trend here also - Poland, which has high unemployment, created 177,000 jobs, while the unemployment rate in Slovakia, which was almost as high, grew further.
Employment and unemployment in EU-25 countries in 2003 and 2004 Source: Eurostat * Employment figures for Germany refer to the 2nd quarter while unemployment figures represent annual estimates. ** 2003 and 2004 data on Greece, Italy, Cyprus, Malta and Austria is not fully comparable
