This paper provides the first Europe-wide evidence on competition among firms in urban hiring markets. It calculates a labour market concentration indicator (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index) by occupation for every functional urban area (FUA) across the 27 EU Member States. The analysis is based on over 100 million online job advertisements (OJAs) collected from hundreds of job portals between 2019 and 2020.
The results show that hiring market concentration varies across urban areas and is linked to migration patterns and employment prospects. It tends to be low in large urban areas in Europe (e.g. Berlin, Milan, Paris), highlighting strong competition among employers and more choice for jobseekers across all occupations.
However, urban labour markets are thinner along the southern and eastern periphery of the EU, particularly in smaller towns. Notably, market concentration increased across European countries during the second quarter of 2020, which coincided with the COVID-19 crisis.
These are the first experimental results using OJAs available at Eurostat, thanks to the collaboration with the European Centre for Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and with European National Statistical Institutes. The data and methodology used in this paper are still in an experimental phase, and some potential improvements are discussed in the paper.
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