In-work poverty among employed Europeans
- Eurostat dataset
- ilc_iw01
- Reference period
- 2025
- Unit of measure
- % of employed persons
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2025): 8.30 % of employed persons.
- Highest value: Bulgaria at 11.8 % of employed persons; lowest: Finland at 3.10 % of employed persons.
- Cross-country mean 7.83 % of employed persons, standard deviation 2.27, coefficient of variation 29.0% across 30 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2014→2025: -9.2% on a constant panel of 30 countries.
How many European workers remain poor despite employment? Eurostat dataset ilc_iw01 reports in-work poverty among employed Europeans for 30 reporting countries, with 2025 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 8.30 % of employed persons. In-work poverty separates the question of having a job from the question of being paid enough to escape poverty.
The five highest values in 2025 are recorded by Bulgaria (11.8), Spain (11.2), Türkiye (10.9), Romania (10.7), Estonia (10.5), all expressed in % of employed persons. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Finland (3.10), Czechia (4.10), Belgium (4.10), Netherlands (5.20), Slovenia (5.50). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 3.81, while the median country reports 8.40 % of employed persons against a mean of 7.83 % of employed persons.
Dispersion is moderate: the standard deviation across countries is 2.27 % of employed persons, giving a coefficient of variation of 29.0%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2014 and 2025 the summed value across the 30 countries reporting in both periods moved by -9.2%. The largest relative increases are observed in Malta (+67.3%), Croatia (+38.6%), Bulgaria (+26.9%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Serbia (-59.4%), Romania (-45.7%), Germany (-32.3%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Lower values are the policy-preferred direction, so the top of the distribution identifies where the burden concentrates: bringing the highest observation down to the median would remove 3.40 % of employed persons from the European total for that country alone. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset ilc_iw01 ('In-work at-risk-of-poverty rate by age and sex'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-06-08. Filter dimensions: age=Y18-64; sex=T; unit=PC; wstatus=EMP. Unit of measure: % of employed persons. Reference period: 2025. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (30 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.