Eurostat said that the employment rate in the EU for people aged between 20 and 64 went up in 2017 to 72.2%, compared with 71.1% the year before.

All Member States accompanied the trend except for Denmark, where the employment rate fell 0.5 percentage points.

The biggest climbers were Bulgaria (3.6 percentage points [pp]), Slovenia (3.3 pp) and Portugal (2.8 pp).

In Portugal, 56.2% of people aged between 55 and 64 had a job in 2017, compared with 52.1% in 2016.