Rates of employment, unemployment and economic activity - July 2026

The employment rate
The proportion of employed persons in the number of all persons aged 15–64 years reached 75.6% in July 2026. It remained unchanged compared to July 2025. The male employment rate was 80.1%; the female employment rate was 71.1%.

“Since July 2023, when methodological changes occurred in the Labour Force Sample Survey, the female employment rate has increased by 3.1 percentage points (p. p.), whereas the male one has decreased by 1.5 p. p. It is partially due to demographic changes as well as to a flow of the labour force to the sector of services and care,” Dalibor Holý, Director of the Labour Market and Equal Opportunities Statistics Department of the Czech Statistical Office, explains.

The general unemployment rate
The percentage of the unemployed in the labour force, that is in the total number of the employed and the unemployed (that means economically active persons), reached 3.4% in July 2026. It increased by 0.3 percentage point, year-on-year. The male unemployment rate reached 2.8%; the female unemployment rate reached 4.0%.

The economic activity rate
The percentage of the economically active in the total number of persons aged 15–64 years reached 78.2%. It increased by 0.2 p. p. compared to that in July 2025. The male economic activity rate (82.4%) exceeded the female economic activity rate (74.0%) by 8.4 p. p.

International comparability
All data presented in the News Release are adjusted. They apply to the age group of 15–64 years. They come from the Labour Force Sample Survey (LFSS) carried out by a network of interviewers of the CZSO in households and are different in terms of methodology from administrative data of the Labour Office of the Czech Republic on registered job applicants (namely the “Share of unemployed persons” indicator).

The LFSS has an internationally comparable methodology, which defines the employed and the unemployed in accordance with recommendations of the International Labour Organization. The CZSO regularly sends data from the LFSS to Eurostat, which prepares monthly press release on unemployment as for Member States of the EU, however, for the age group of 15–74 years. The unemployment rate in that age group (of the aged 15–74 years) was 3.3% in Czechia in July 2026.

In compliance with the international methodology for the LFSS, the survey is only carried out in private households; collective accommodation establishments as well as temporary shelters are not covered.

Tables 1 and 2 enclosed contain both trend-cycle and unadjusted time series of rates of employment, unemployment, and economic activity, starting from 1993. A time series from 2015 has been used to identify the model.