Domestic payroll employment in the 2nd quarter of 2026: +0.4% quarter-over-quarter, +1.6% year-over-year

Quarter-on-quarter growth in salaried employment remained moderate at 0.4% compared with the first quarter of 2026. Year-on-year, growth in salaried employment stood at 1.6%, compared with 1.4% in the first quarter of 2026. As in previous quarters, public administration and other public services recorded the strongest growth, with a rise of +1.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter. As for the construction sector, the number of employees fell slightly in the second quarter of 2026 (-0.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter).

The public administration and other public services sector remains the most dynamic, with growth of 1.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter and 4.3 per cent year-on-year. It was primarily central government services and hospital activities that recorded the most favourable trends over the last twelve months. Employment in the construction sector, having stabilised over the previous two quarters, fell slightly in the second quarter (-0.1 per cent quarter-on-quarter). Year-on-year, a decline of 0.4 per cent was observed in the second quarter of 2026 (with other specialised construction activities suffering the greatest job losses over this period).

In the second quarter of 2026, the number of cross-border workers rose more sharply than that of resident workers (+0.6 per cent compared with +0.2 per cent). The number of German cross-border workers, meanwhile, recorded a slight increase of 0.1 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2026, following several consecutive quarters of falling employment.

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).