OREANDA-NEWS. In 2015 in the European Union (EU), the proportion of people economically active (employed and unemployed) stood just below 70% for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 (69.8%), while the activity rate was above 77% for citizens of the reporting country (77.3%), referred to as “nationals”. A similar pattern is observed in most EU Member States. In detail, non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 were faced with a notably higher unemployment rate and lower employment rate than nationals. The picture was very different when analysing the labour market situation of nationals compared with that of citizens of another EU Member State.

This information comes from a publication issued by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, with data, broken down by citizenship and country of birth, on a wide range of indicators related to the labour market outcomes of the migrant population, of which only a small selection is shown in this News Release. Migrant integration indicators available at Eurostat also include social inclusion, education and active citizenship.

Activity rates differ most between non-EU citizens and nationals in the Netherlands, Finland and Germany

In a majority of Member States, the activity rate of nationals was higher than for non-EU citizens, except in particular in Greece (72.6% for nationals compared with 80.7% for non-EU citizens) and Slovenia (75.7% vs. 83.5%), followed by Slovakia (76.2% vs. 81.3%), Italy (67.9% vs. 72.6%), Spain (78.7% vs. 82.0%), Cyprus (79.3% vs. 81.5%), Portugal (79.0% vs. 80.9%), the Czech Republic (78.7% vs. 79.2%) and Hungary (73.8% vs. 74.1%).

In 2015 across Member States, the most significant differences between the activity rates for non-EU citizens and for nationals were recorded in the Netherlands (59.7% for non-EU citizens compared with 82.2% for nationals, or -22.5 percentage points), Finland (-18.8 pp) and Germany (-18.3 pp), followed by France (-15.7 pp), Denmark (-15.6 pp), Sweden (-15.3 pp) and Belgium (-14.6 pp). On average in the EU, the difference between the activity rate for non-EU citizens (69.8%) and for citizens of the reporting country (77.3%) was -7.5 percentage points in 2015.

Unemployment rate more than twice as high for non-EU citizens

Looking in detail at their respective situation on the labour market, the employment rate for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 in the EU stood at 56.7% in 2015, while it was 70.6% for nationals. The share of employees with a temporary contract was higher for non-EU citizens (21.4%) than for nationals (12.9%). The pattern was the same for the proportion of part time employment, which was more widespread amongst non-EU citizens (28.3%) than amongst nationals (18.4%).

For unemployment, the rate for non-EU citizens aged 20 to 64 (18.9%) was more than twice the level for nationals (8.7%). However, the share of people unemployed for 12 months or more was slightly lower for non-EU citizens (49.5%) than for nationals (50.7%).