This rate is one of the lowest in the European Union, with the community average of vacant jobs was 2.2% in the first quarter.

“In the first quarter of 2025, the job vacancy rate was 2.4% in the euro area, down from 2.5% in the last quarter of 2024 and 2.9% in the first quarter of 2024,” the statistics office said in a statement published on Monday.

“The job vacancy rate in the European Union was 2.2% in the first quarter of 2025, down from 2.3% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 2.5% in the first quarter of 2024,” Eurostat also said.

Among the Member States for which data are available, the highest job vacancy rate was recorded in the Netherlands (4.2%), followed by Belgium (4.1%) and Austria (3.6%).

The lowest rates were recorded in Romania (0.6%), Poland (0.8%), Bulgaria and Spain (both with 0.9%).

Not far behind these last countries is Portugal, with a job vacancy rate of 1.3%. It is the sixth lowest in the European Union, although it increased by 0.1 percentage points in the annual comparison.

On the other hand, Eurostat published this morning the data on labour costs, which increased by 3.4% in the Eurozone and 4.1% in the European Union, in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2024.

In Portugal, the increase was less pronounced than the EU average (4.0% versus 4.1%), and was far from the jumps recorded in Romania (16.1%), Croatia (13.5%) and Bulgaria (13%), as shown in the graph above.