Rates of employment, unemployment and economic activity - May 2022

The employment rate

The proportion of employed persons in the number of all persons aged 15–64 years reached 75.3% in May 2022. It increased by 1.2 percentage point (p.p.) compared to that in May 2021. The male employment rate was 82.5%; the female employment rate was 67.8%. The employment rate of persons aged 15–29 years was 44.7%, in the age group of 30–49 years it was 87.9%, and in the age group of 50–64 years it was 79.8%.

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 2.5% in May 2022. It decreased by 0.7 percentage point, year-on-year. The male unemployment rate reached 1.9%; the female unemployment rate reached 3.3%.

“The unemployment remains below three percent for a whole year already. For the same period, also the employment rate has been increasing in the year-on-year comparison,” Dalibor Holý, Director of the Labour Market and Equal Opportunities Statistics Department of the Czech Statistical Office, comments on the results.

The economic activity rate

The percentage of the economically active in the total number of persons aged 15–64 years reached 77.2%. It increased by 0.7 p. p. compared to that in May 2021. The male economic activity rate (84.0%) exceeded the female economic activity rate by 13.9 p. p.

International comparability

All data presented in the News Release are seasonally 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 also 2.5% in the Czech Republic in May 2022.

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. Due to those reasons, coming of war refugees from the Ukraine will, for the time being, be reflected only marginally in the trends.

Tables 1 and 2 enclosed contain methodologically consistent time series of basic indicators of the labour market and numbers of the employed and unemployed persons, starting in 1993.

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