Domestic payroll employment: +0.2% in the first quarter of 2025 and +0.9% over 12 months

As in previous quarters, quarterly growth in salaried employment remained very moderate, rising by 0.2% compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. Year-on-year growth reached 0.9%. Trade, transport, accommodation and catering (+0.6%) and administration and other public services (+0.9%) posted the strongest quarterly growth compared with the fourth quarter of 2024. On the other hand, the construction, information and communication sectors, as well as specialised activities and support services, recorded a decline in the number of employees in the first quarter of 2025.

Once again, administration and other public services (+3.7% year-on-year) were the most dynamic sectors in annual comparison. Central government services and social work activities, excluding accommodation for the elderly and disabled, recorded the strongest growth. In contrast, the construction sector saw a sharp decline of 3.3% in the number of employees over one year, particularly in residential and non-residential construction, which suffered the most significant job losses.

Finally, in the first quarter of 2025, the number of resident employees grew slightly more than the number of cross-border workers (+0.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024 for residents, compared to +0.1% for cross-border workers). However, the number of German and Belgian cross-border employees fell compared with the first quarter of 2024, with declines of 0.5% and 0.4% respectively.

Evolution of domestic payroll employment (compared to the previous quarter)

Source: STATEC, National Accounts, seasonally adjusted data

Evolution of domestic payroll employment

Methodological note :

Employment estimates are based on the concept of national accounts and are compiled in accordance with the European System of National and Regional Accounts 2010 (ESA 2010), which defines employment in accordance with the criteria of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Data on domestic salaried employment include all employees working in the national territory, including cross-border employees living beyond the national border and coming to work in the Grand Duchy, but excluding resident employees working abroad and international civil servants residing in the country. The unit of measurement is the person. Thus, a person working part-time counts as one person, as does a person employed in two part-time jobs. There is also no conversion to full-time equivalents.

Employment estimates in the national accounts may differ from those in other statistics, such as social security registrations published by the IGSS (which include employees who do not work in the national territory and do not distinguish by economic activity unit), or surveys, in particular the labour force survey (which does not cover cross-border workers).

The data are seasonally adjusted and subject to revision. For short-term analysis and quarter-on-quarter developments, the data are seasonally adjusted, while year-on-year changes are calculated on the basis of the raw data.

Long series, both unadjusted and seasonally adjusted, are available in the 'Labour market' section of the Statistics Portal.

The data is published once a quarter, 75 days after the end of the reference period (T+75 days).