2022 was a busy one in the labour market. As the pandemic’s impact was initially felt in Europe, cross-border job searches fell 32% below their 2017-19 average, according to data from jobs site Indeed. Those figures stayed low during most of 2020, as well as the first half of 2021.
But since then, searches––and hiring activity–– have rebounded. According to EU labour market quarterly statistics from Eurostat, 193.9 million people in the EU were employed in the second quarter of 2022, up by 0.3 percentage points from 74.5% in the first quarter of the year.