Warsaw region has EU's highest employment rate at 86.9%, Eurostat data shows

Eurostat ranking

Eurostat's latest analysis of 244 NUTS 2 regions in the European Union puts the Warsaw capital region (region warszawski stołeczny) first for employment among people aged 20 to 64, at 86.9% in 2025. The region finished ahead of Prague at 86.0%, the Finnish Åland Islands at 85.5% and Utrecht in the Netherlands at 85.4%. Upper Bavaria, which includes Munich, reached 85.1%, and the Swedish region of Mellersta Norrland 85.0%. The Warsaw region also records one of the highest employment rates in the EU for 20 to 64 year olds with higher education (93.5%) and one of the lowest unemployment rates for people aged 15 to 29 (7.5%).

A return to the top

The region also led the EU in 2023 with 86.5%, ahead of the Bratislava region in Slovakia at 85.8% and the German region of Trier at 85.4%. In 2024 it slipped to second place with 86.2%, behind the Åland Islands at 86.4%. The 2025 reading is higher than both earlier Eurostat figures and returns the region to first place. Forsal gives the EU average for 2025 as 76.1%, the highest level since the EU series began in 2009, which places the Warsaw region 10.8 percentage points above the average. Other coverage in the same period gives the EU average as 86%, a figure that conflicts with the 76.1% and cannot be reconciled from the articles. The region is already 8.9 percentage points above the EU target of at least 78% for 2030.

Demography behind the numbers

Marcin Mrowiec, chief economist at Grant Thornton, told Rzeczpospolita that demographic change is having a growing influence on the Polish labour market and on regional markets. He described the underlying pressure in these words:

We are the fastest-ageing society in Europe, and while people leaving for retirement are quickly leaving the labour market, young people entering it are arriving much more slowly.

Rzeczpospolita adds that the small supply of young candidates makes employers more cautious about making redundancies. The newspaper presents this as one reason the labour market has held up in the capital, where demand for workers remains comparatively steady.

Why the capital stands out

Monika Fedorczuk, director of the Warsaw city Labour Office (Urząd Pracy m.st. Warszawa), points to the size and variety of the local market, which Grant Thornton reports show has the largest number of new job offers. The region hosts public administration, the offices of international institutions and the headquarters of national companies, and some projects covering the whole country are run from there. Public administration acts as a stabiliser in weaker periods, absorbing specialists who lose jobs in corporations, most recently IT specialists including cybersecurity experts. According to the city hall, the Warsaw metropolitan area covers 70 gminas and 9 districts (powiats) beyond the city itself. Rzeczpospolita also reports that the capital is largely spared the sector shocks that hit smaller cities and places heavily dependent on business services.

Young people and graduates

Only 4.2% of young people in the Warsaw capital region are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET), against 11% across all EU regions, although that average is pushed up by French overseas regions. Rzeczpospolita says the capital also attracts many dynamic young people who leave ageing areas, which supports both the labour pool and the number of new business start-ups. The 93.5% employment rate for graduates aged 20 to 64 and the 7.5% youth unemployment rate are the figures the articles cite to show how the region's young workforce is absorbed.