Three-and-a half million left their jobs in 2022

In the third quarter of 2022, 3.5 million people in the EU aged 25 to 54 left their jobs, data released on Friday showed.

More than two-thirds (68.9 per cent) left their job for labour market reasons, meaning the end of a fixed-term contract, a dismissal or a business closure for economic reasons, according to Eurostat.

Recent job-leavers are defined as people who left their job in the last three months before data was collected and are no longer in employment, here, the focus is on those aged 25-54. This share was 3.2 percent lower compared with the third quarter of 2021.

In Cyprus, the share of recent job-leavers that left due to labour market reasons was 38.9 per cent during the third quarter of 2022. Eurostat did not provide data for how this percentage has changed on a national level.

In the third quarter of 2022, among the EU members, the highest shares of people leaving their jobs due to labour market reasons were recorded in Italy (89.9 per cent), followed by Hungary (88.6 per cent), Greece (87.6 per cent), Spain (81.6 per cent) and Croatia (70.6 per cent).

There was a large gap between the highest and lowest shares, with the lowest share recorded in the Netherlands (27.3 per cent). This was followed by the Czech Republic (31.6 per cent), Lithuania (32.3 per cent), Estonia (36.6 per cent) and Ireland (36.7 per cent).

At an EU level, the significance of the labour-market reason was even stronger among those with a low level of education (74.6 per cent), followed by those with high and medium levels of education (67.8 per cent and 66.2 per cent, respectively).

The main reason for workers leaving their jobs was the end of fixed-term contracts.The second most common reason was dismissal or a business closure for economic reasons, which concerned 545,000 people (15.8 per cent of all recent job leavers against 15.1 per cent in Q3 2021).

Leaving their job for other or not stated reasons ranked third, affecting 478,000 people (13.9 per cent), followed by education or other personal reasons (311,000 or 9 per cent) and family reasons, illness, or retirement (283,000 or 8.2 per cent).