Unemployment trends in the European Union Member States, April 2026

Released: 8 June 2026

In April 2026 (based on seasonally adjusted data), the unemployment rate in the European Union was 6.0%, unchanged from both the previous month and from April 2025. Unemployment was lowest in Bulgaria (2.8%) and Poland (3.0%), while it was highest in Finland (10.6%) and Spain (10.3%).

In April 2026, the unemployment rate¹ in Hungary stood at 4.6%, which was 0.2 percentage points higher than a month earlier and 0.3 percentage points higher than a year before. Within the EU, the Hungarian unemployment rate was the tenth lowest. Among the V4 countries, unemployment was higher than in Hungary in Slovakia (5.8%), and lower in Poland and Czechia (3.0% and 3.1%, respectively).

The number of unemployed people in Hungary – based on seasonally adjusted data – was 223 thousand in April 2026. In the period February to April 2026, the average duration of job search was 13.1 months, the same as a year earlier, while the share of the long‑term unemployed (at least one year) increased by 2.4 percentage points to 36.1%.

According to the administrative data of the National Employment Service, by the end of April 2026 the number of registered jobseekers decreased by 0.8% compared with the previous month and by 3.1% to 221 thousand compared with a year earlier.

The March 2026 forecast of the National Bank of Hungary puts the unemployment rate at 4.6% in 2026 and 4.3% in 2027. According to OECD calculations, a slow decline can be expected from the second quarter of 2026, with the rate projected at 4.5% for 2026 as a whole and 4.1% for 2027. Trading Economics forecasts² that the domestic unemployment rate will fall to 4.0% by the third quarter of 2026, before rising thereafter, while the IMF projects a rate of 4.2% for 2026 and 4.0% for 2027.