(30 May 2016) – In the majority of Member States, city dwellers are less at risk of poverty or social exclusion than rural dwellers, but this risk affects around 24% of all city dwellers.
On average in the EU, 70.0% of city dwellers aged 20 to 64 were employed in 2015, with employment rates ranging from 79.8% in Sweden to 53.0% in Greece.
In the majority of Member States, cities recorded higher employment rates than rural areas, in particular in Bulgaria (with a 16.7 percentage point difference) and Lithuania (10.5 pp).
In contrast, in eleven Member States, the employment rate was lower in cities than in rural areas, most markedly in Belgium (9.1 pp), Austria (8.7 pp), Germany (6.0 pp), Greece and France (both 5.6 pp), the Netherlands (5.5 pp) and the United Kingdom (4.2 pp).
In the majority of Member States, city dwellers were less at risk of poverty or social exclusion than rural dwellers, in particular in Romania (with a 22.4 percentage point difference) and Bulgaria (21.4 pp).
In contrast, in seven Member States the risk of poverty or social exclusion was higher in cities than in rural areas: Austria (with a 14.2 pp difference), Denmark (9.4 pp), Belgium (7.5 pp), the United Kingdom (6.6 pp), Germany (5.3 pp), France (3.3 pp) and the Netherlands (3.1 pp).