The euro area labour market

Executive summary

Euro area unemployment has sat between 6.3% and 6.4% for a year, and the flat aggregate hides everything that moved beneath it: 21 national rates run from 3.5% to 10.5%, employment is at a record 176,448 thousand with hours per worker flat, wage growth is decelerating on both published measures, and the tracker built from signed wage agreements points to re-acceleration into 2027.

This report reads six published series: the monthly unemployment rate and its full member-state detail, the quarterly labour cost index, the ECB's negotiated-wage indicator and forward tracker, employment, and hours worked. Three release calendars are represented and every figure carries the date of its own observation; nothing here is a forecast by IWP, and the one forward-looking table is the ECB's own, quoted.

Policy moved inside the reporting window: the ECB's deposit facility rate steps up a quarter point to 2.50% with effect from 16 September 2026, following the 10 September decision, and its September projections assume annual average unemployment of 6.2% for 2026, an assumption the monthly prints are already testing.