Out of all persons in the European Union (EU) who were unemployed in the third quarter 2015, 64.0% (12.5 million persons) remained unemployed in the fourth quarter 2015, while 17.7% (3.5 million) moved into employment and 18.4% (3.6 million) towards economic inactivity in Q4 2015.
In Cyprus, during the same quarter, 19.0% of the persons unemployed found a job, 70.6% remained unemployed and 10.4% moved to economic inactivity. Compared to same quarter of 2014, that constitutes an increase of 1.2% of those finding a job, a decrease of 7.4% for those remaining in unemployment and an increase of 6.1% of those moving to economic inactivity.
Of all those initially in employment, 95.8% (169.7 million persons) remained in employment, while 1.7% (3.0 million) of those employed in the third quarter were unemployed in the fourth quarter, and 2.5% (4.4 million) transitioned into economic inactivity. Today, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, publishes quarterly labour market flows, based on non-seasonally adjusted labour market data from the European Union Labour Force Survey. Labour market flows show the movements of individuals between employment, unemployment, and economic inactivity and enrich the analysis of the net changes in stocks. These statistics help to understand and interpret changes in the levels of labour market indicators. In order to ensure comparability, data published by Eurostat are based on a harmonised methodology. This may result in small differences between these data and those published nationally.
These labour market flows are highly seasonal, which means that both the size and the direction of a flow in and out of unemployment depend not only on general economic conditions, but also on seasonal factors such as students seeking jobs after graduation.