Latvia’s labour market in 2025 looks stable at the headline level. Employment increased slightly, unemployment remained unchanged, and economic activity rose. But this stability is uneven. The market protects some groups much better than others — and it does not fully support the political story that vocational education automatically leads to stable industrial employment.
The strongest position belongs to people with higher education, work experience, and access to the Riga labour market — either by living in the capital region or by being connected to it through commuting routes. The weakest position is found where several risks overlap: weak regional labour markets, lower education, lack of work experience, physically demanding jobs, health limitations, unpaid care responsibilities, or a poor bridge between education and the first stable job.
Latvia’s labour market in 2025: the headline picture
| Indicator | 2025 | Signal |
|---|---|---|
| Economically active population, 15–74 | 948.9 thousand | slight increase |
| Economic activity rate | 69.3% | up by 0.6 pp |
| Employed population, 15–74 | 883.1 thousand | up by 5.7 thousand |
| Employment rate, 15–74 | 64.5% | up by 0.5 pp |
| Unemployed population | 65.8 thousand | up by 0.5 thousand |
| Unemployment rate | 6.9% | unchanged |
The first important nuance is that Latvia looks better in rates than in absolute numbers. In 2025, Latvia had 883.1 thousand employed people, compared with 896.1 thousand in 2015. The employment rate has improved, but the number of employed people has not returned to the level seen ten years earlier.
This is a labour market adapting to demographic pressure rather than expanding strongly.
Region: Riga is not only a city, but a labour-market radius
| Region | Economic activity | Employment rate | Unemployment rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riga region | 73.1% | 68.3% | 6.6% |
| Zemgale | 68.2% | 64.1% | 6.0% |
| Vidzeme | 67.9% | 63.7% | 6.2% |
| Kurzeme | 67.1% | 62.1% | 7.3% |
| Latgale | 60.9% | 54.9% | 9.8% |
The regional divide is not simply “Riga versus the rest”. Riga has the highest employment and economic activity rates, but Zemgale recorded the lowest unemployment rate in 2025. This needs careful reading.
Zemgale’s position does not necessarily mean that all employment is generated inside the region. According to CSP data, 18.5% of employed residents of Zemgale worked in another region, and most of them commuted to Riga. This means that Zemgale’s labour-market position is partly supported by access to Riga’s jobs, alongside its own agricultural, food-related, logistics and local employer base.
The Riga labour market, in other words, does not stop at the city boundary. It extends along commuting corridors. Regular trains, buses, roads, travel time and commuting costs are therefore not only transport issues. They are part of labour-market infrastructure.
A region may show relatively low unemployment not only because it generates enough jobs internally, but also because its residents can realistically access a larger labour market without relocating.
Latgale remains the clearest weak point: low economic activity, the lowest employment rate and the highest unemployment rate coincide there. That is not a temporary statistical detail, but a structural labour-market problem.
Education: vocational secondary is better than general secondary, but far from higher education
| Education level | Employment rate | Unemployment rate |
|---|---|---|
| Higher education | 81.3% | 3.8% |
| Vocational / professional secondary education | 65.6% | 7.1% |
| General secondary education | 59.7% | 9.3% |
| Basic education or lower | 30.9% | 16.1% |
Higher education remains the strongest protection in Latvia’s labour market. People with higher education have much higher employment and much lower unemployment than other groups.
Vocational or professional secondary education is not useless. It performs better than general secondary education. But it does not provide anything close to the labour-market protection of higher education. In employment terms, vocational secondary education is much closer to general secondary than to higher education.
That raises the central problem with the usual political formula that “factories need workers”. The data do not show a simple, reliable path from vocational school to stable employment.
The issue may not be vocational education itself. The weak point may be the bridge: vocational school → workplace practice → first employer → stable job. If this bridge is weak, a young person may receive a qualification but still not receive a strong entry into permanent employment.
Age: the market is strongest for 25–44, hardest at the entry point
| Age group | Economic activity | Unemployment rate | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15–24 | 36.1% | 14.8% | difficult entry into work |
| 25–34 | 88.2% | 6.8% | strong labour-market inclusion |
| 35–44 | 89.4% | 6.8% | core working-age group |
| 45–54 | 87.1% | 7.0% | active, but risks begin to rise |
| 55–64 | 78.3% | 6.0% | older workers remain highly active |
| 65–74 | 25.7% activity / 25.4% employment | — | work after pension age is significant |
The strongest labour-market core is the 25–44 group. These are the ages where economic activity is highest and unemployment is relatively contained.
Young people face the most difficult entry point. The unemployment rate among 15–24-year-olds reached 14.8% in 2025. This should be interpreted carefully, because many people in this age group are still studying. But the direction matters: youth unemployment increased, while Latvia still has a significant share of young people outside both work and education.
For young people, the market increasingly rewards not only education, but proof of work readiness. Work experience during studies may help, but not all experience has the same value. A job in a café, retail chain or delivery service may show discipline, schedule reliability and customer-facing skills. But it does not necessarily become a professional career path linked to the person’s education.
The 45–54 group is also important. This is still prime working age, but unemployment is slightly higher than in the 25–44 groups. For men, especially those with a history of physical work, this may reflect not only sectoral weakness but also health limitations accumulated over years of employment.
The older groups show another side of the same problem. Employment among people aged 65–74 reached 25.4%. For the economy, this is a labour reserve. For people, it is not always a story of “active ageing”. For some, continuing to work after pension age is a way to maintain income when pensions and the cost of living do not allow a comfortable exit from the labour market.
Women, care and hidden inactivity
Economic inactivity should not be read simply as “not wanting to work”. Part of it reflects unpaid work inside households.
For women, the issue is not only childcare. In an ageing society, care responsibilities may include elderly parents, sick relatives, children, or several generations at once. This matters for labour-market policy because unpaid care can remove people from paid employment even when they would otherwise be able or willing to work.
This is one reason why employment policy cannot be separated from childcare, eldercare, flexible work and return-to-work pathways after a break. A person may be statistically “inactive” while performing work that is essential for the household and indirectly for the social system itself.
The weak political story: “factories need workers”
The 2025 data do not support a simple linear story in which vocational education automatically leads to stable industrial employment.
Manufacturing employment rose only slightly in 2025, from 107.1 thousand to 108.7 thousand. Construction employment fell from 64.8 thousand to 62.1 thousand. Transport and storage also declined, from 68.5 thousand to 63.4 thousand. These are not sectors showing broad expansion strong enough to absorb a large new flow of local vocational graduates.
At the same time, if construction, manufacturing and transport increasingly rely on foreign or guest workers, this does not simply prove that “workers are needed”. It points to a more specific problem: these sectors need workers under certain conditions — at certain wages, in certain locations, with shift work, physical workload, mobility, and often limited long-term career prospects.
That is a different question from whether these jobs offer a stable and attractive trajectory for local graduates.
The unresolved contradiction is this: Latvia encourages young people toward vocational and industrial paths, while the labour-market data show stronger protection for higher education, Riga access and higher-skilled services. If the jobs offered by factories, construction companies or transport firms are not attractive enough for local workers, employers will continue to fill gaps from outside — and the vocational education narrative will remain incomplete.
Bottom line
Latvia’s labour market is not in crisis. But it is selective.
It works best for educated, mobile and already integrated workers, especially those with access to Riga or to a strong regional employment base. It works much less smoothly for young people entering work without experience, for vocational graduates without a direct bridge to employers, for people in weaker regions, for workers tied to physically demanding sectors, and for those constrained by health or unpaid care responsibilities.
The main question is therefore not only how many people are unemployed. It is whether Latvia can offer a stable working trajectory outside the narrow zone where the market already works: higher education, Riga access, prior experience and sectors with better long-term prospects.