Czech unemployment drops under 2% in historic low

Prague, Czech Republic – For years, the Czech Republic has had the lowest unemployment rate in the EU. And it doesn’t look like it’s about to change any time soon.

According to figures released on Wednesday by Eurostat, the Czech unemployment rate has continued to drop in the first half of the year, reaching 1.9% in June (compared to 2.3% in June 2018), a record-low in recent years.

Only 105,000 people don’t have any job in the Czech Republic, as companies continue to struggle with unprecedented labour shortages.

This is by far the single lowest joblessness rate in Europe: in second place comes Germany with an unemployment rate of 3.1%, followed by Hungary, Malta the Netherlands (3.4% each) and the U.K. (3.7%).

With an unemployment rate of 3.8% in June, Poland is also among the top performers in the EU, a share that has been stagnating over the past year. There are currently 650,000 unemployed people in Poland, according to the EU’s statistical office.

Slovakia reports the highest unemployment in Central Europe at 5.4%, but the most significant improvement compared to one year ago, with a 1.3 percentage point drop over 12 months.

All Visegrad Group countries remain well below the EU (6.3%) and Eurozone average (7.5%).

In contrast, Europe’s southern countries reported the highest proportions of unemployed people, including Greece (17.6%), Spain (14%), Italy (9.7%) and France (8.7%).

In terms of youth unemployment (under 25), Germany came out on top (5.5% youth unemployment rate), followed by the Netherlands (6.5%) and Czechia (6.6%) – nearly twice as less than neighbouring Poland (10.9%) Slovakia (12.3%).