Brussels – Europe is edging closer to its 2030 employment target. Still, Italy continues to show a deep regional divide, according to data released today (6 October) by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union. In 2025, the employment rate for people aged between 20 and 64 in the EU rose to 76.1 per cent, just 1.9 percentage points short of the 78 per cent target set by the European Pillar of Social Rights.
Almost half of Europe’s regions – 115 out of 244 – have already reached or exceeded the threshold. In Italy, 11 out of 20 regions remain below 74 per cent. The group includes Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, Lazio, Umbria, and Marche: almost all of which are concentrated in central and southern Italy. Lazio, despite being the region in which the capital is located, has a rate of 69.3 per cent.
The gap is particularly striking when looking at the regions at the extremes of the ranking. The Autonomous Province of Bolzano stands at around 80 per cent, while in Calabria the rate drops to 50.3 per cent. Next come Campania, at 50.8 per cent, and Sicily, at 51.4 per cent: these are the three lowest figures recorded in Italy and among the lowest in the entire EU.
The internal disparity within Italy is therefore close to 30 percentage points, compared with a national rate of 67.6 per cent among the population aged 20 to 64. This is one of the most pronounced regional disparities in the EU: Eurostat flags Italy as the country with the widest gap in employment rates across regions.
However, a European comparison also paints a positive picture. In 2025, six regions exceeded 85 per cent: the Polish capital region of Warszawski stołeczny (86.9 per cent), Prague (86 per cent), Åland in Finland (85.5 per cent), Utrecht in the Netherlands (85.4 per cent), Oberbayern in Germany (85.1 per cent) and Mellersta Norrland in Sweden (85 per cent). At the other end of the scale, 64 European regions – around a quarter of the total – remained below 74 per cent. In addition to Italy, the group of laggards includes 11 French regions, 11 Greek regions, 11 Spanish regions and seven Romanian regions. The lowest figure in the EU is that of Mayotte, at 36.9 per cent, followed by French Guiana at 50 per cent.
The data thus show a Europe that is moving closer to its overall target, but convergence remains far from uniform. And Italy is one of the clearest examples of this disparity between national performance and that of individual regions.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
