Businesses in Europe must contend with economic uncertainty when looking for new hires, although unemployment rates remains historically low.
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The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the eurozone was 6.3% in May 2025, up from 6.2% in April 2025 and down from 6.4% the prior year.
Eurostat also confirmed on Wednesday that the EU unemployment rate was 5.9% in May 2025. That’s a flat reading compared to April 2025 and down from 6.0% in May 2024.
To look at the underlying figures, 13.052 million people in the EU were unemployed in May 2025, of whom 10.830 million were in the eurozone.
Unemployment rates remained relatively stable in major eurozone economies aside from Italy, which saw a jump from 6.1% to 6.5% in May.
Historically few people are without work in the eurozone as companies struggle to plug job shortages. This is putting some upward pressure on wage growth, although salaries are still coming down from post-inflation shock highs.
“For the end of the year, we expect wage growth to drop to around 3% or slightly below. With productivity growth picking up, this means that inflationary pressures from the labour market are actually fading and should align with the ECB's 2% inflation target,” said Bert Colijn, ING’s chief economist for the Netherlands. “So, despite a continued heated labour market, wage pressures are likely to pose a lesser immediate risk to the ECB's inflation outlook,” he added.
Although interest rates and price pressures have declined over the past year in the eurozone, businesses are also facing added uncertainty from US tariffs and geopolitical tensions.
US President Donald Trump has set a deadline of 9 July to secure agreements with trading partners before his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs come back into effect after a 90-day pause.
