The Agency for Labor and Employment of Bosnia and Herzegovina published the monthly “Statistical overview of the state of the labor market in Bosnia and Herzegovina” with the state as of December 31, 2025.
As of December 31, 2015, there were 314,794 persons in the records of employment institutes and services in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Compared to the previous month, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 76 persons or 0.02%. Of the total number of people seeking employment, 187,786 or 59.65% are women. Compared to the same period last year, unemployment in BiH is lower by 5,902 people or 1.84 percent.
Unemployment decreased in the Federation of BiH by 108 persons (0.04%), and increased in the Republika Srpska by 21 persons (0.04%) and in the Brčko District of BiH by 11 persons (0.09%).
If we look at the structure of people looking for employment, as of December 31, the NKV (unskilled worker) was 90,949 or 28.89 percent, of which 36,140 (28.45 percent) were men and 54,809 (29.19 percent) were women; PKV-NSS (semi-skilled worker/lower vocational education) 4,089 or 1.30 percent, of which 1,916 (1.51%) men and 2,173 (1.16%) women; KV (skilled worker) 98,589 or 31.32 percent, of which 49,589 (39.04%) men and 49,000 (26.09%) women; VKV (highly qualified worker) 583 or 0.19%, of which 419 (0.33%) men and 164 (0.09%) women; SSS (secondary vocational education) 90,416 or 28.72%, of which 30,250 (23.82%) men and 60,166 (32.04%) women; VŠS (higher vocational education) 4,776 or 1.52 percent, of which 1,603 (1.26%) men and 3,173 (1.69%) women; VSC (high vocational education) 25,392 or 8.07%, of which 7,091 (5.58%) men and 18,301 (9.75%) women.
Of the total number of registered unemployed persons in December 2025, there were 10,985 newly registered persons looking for work, of which 5,597 were women. The number of persons deleted from the records of employment institutes and services is 11,127. The number of women deleted from the register is 5,708. Of the total number deleted from the records of institutes and employment services, 7,015 or 63.04% were employed, of which 3,731 were women or 53.19%.
In December 2025, employers reported 2,734 needs for hiring new workers to employment institutes and services in BiH, of which 705 were women, while the registered number of persons whose employment relationship ended in the reporting period was 8,171. The registered number of women whose employment relationship ended in the reporting period was 4,178 or 51.13%.
According to the data of the BiH Statistics Agency, in November 2025, the number of employed persons in BiH was 854,483, of which 390,876 were women. Compared to October 2025, the number of employed persons decreased by 0.1%, and the number of employed women also decreased by 0.1%.
According to the results of the Labor Force Survey for the third quarter of 2025, the labor force (economically active population) in BiH was 1,441,000 people, while the number of inactive people was 1,432,000.
There were 1,280,000 employed and 162,000 unemployed persons in the labor force. The survey unemployment rate is significantly lower than the registered unemployment rate at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the third quarter of 2025, which was 11.2%.
The number of employed persons in the third quarter of 2025 increased by 4.8% compared to the second quarter of 2025, while the number of unemployed persons decreased by 12.0%.
The unemployment rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 3rd quarter of 2025 was 11.2% and is lower than the 2nd quarter of 2025 (13.1%) by 1.9 percentage points. The survey employment rate in the third quarter of 2025 was 44.5% and is higher than the second quarter of 2025 (42.5%) by 2.0 percentage points.
The youth unemployment rate (ages 15-24) in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the third quarter of 2025 was 33.5% and is lower than the second quarter of 2025 (33.9%) by 0.4 percentage points, it says. Klix.
