According to the statistics office, in the fourth quarter of 2023, the rate of vacant jobs — that is, the share of available jobs in total jobs — stood at 2.7% in the Euro Zone and by 2.5% in the European Union, which corresponds, in both cases, to chain and year-on-year declines.

Among the Member States for which data is available, the most significant rate recorded between October and December was that of Belgium, where 4.4% of jobs were vacant. Also highlighted were the Netherlands (4.2%), Austria (4.1%) and Germany (3.9%).

In contrast, in Bulgaria and Romania less than one in every 100 jobs was available at the end of last year. In these countries, the job vacancy rate was 0.7% in the fourth quarter.

And at the base of the table, Spain and Poland (both with 0.8%), Ireland (1%) and Slovakia (1.1%) also appear.

Right after Slovakia, in the seventh worst European position, comes Portugal, with a job vacancy rate of 1.3%, below the European Union average and the Euro Zone average. Here, this indicator fell 0.1 percentage points between quarters and 0.2% year-on-year.

Eurostat notes that the decline was the trend in the majority of Member States (19), with only five achieving increases and three achieving stability.