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Cyprus Employment Rises As Unemployment Continues To Decline

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

February 27, 2026

Employment Growth And Workforce Expansion

Total employment in Cyprus reached 531,062 people in the fourth quarter of 2025, representing 65.2% of the population, according to data from the Cyprus Statistical Service (Cystat). This compares with 518,053 people, or 64.3%, in the same period of 2024. The number of employed individuals rose to 509,773, lifting the employment rate to 62.6% from 61.4% a year earlier.

Declining Unemployment And Gender Breakdown

Unemployment continued to decline, with the number of unemployed falling to 21,289. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.0%, compared with 4.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Male unemployment stood at 3.8%, while female unemployment reached 4.2%. Employment rates rose to 67.6% for men and 57.9% for women, reflecting broad-based improvement across the labor market.

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Improved Outcomes For The Core Working-Age Group

Among people aged 20 to 64, the employment rate increased to 81.7%, up from 80.2% a year earlier. Employment gains were also recorded among older workers, with the 55–64 age group rising from 69.9% to 71.7%. The data suggests continued expansion in workforce participation across multiple age groups.

Sectoral Distribution And Employment Patterns

Services remained the largest employer, accounting for 81.3% of total jobs, followed by industry at 16.5% and agriculture at 2.2%, broadly unchanged from the previous year. Part-time employment represented 8.6% of total jobs, or 43,703 positions, compared with 8.8% previously. Full-time employment accounted for 90.2%, totaling 460,003 positions. The share of temporary contracts increased to 14.8% from 13.6%.

Rising Youth Unemployment

Despite overall labor market improvement, youth unemployment increased. The unemployment rate among people aged 15–24 rose to 14.7%, compared with 9.6% a year earlier. At the same time, long-term unemployment declined to 18.3% from 25.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Most unemployed individuals, around 66.6%, had been seeking work for less than six months.

Comprehensive Quarterly Analysis

The Labour Force Survey is conducted quarterly by Cystat and covers approximately 3,800 households across urban and rural areas. The data provides a snapshot of labor market trends in Cyprus as employment growth continues alongside shifting dynamics in youth and temporary employment.

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Google Cloud Outage Disrupts Banking And Digital Services Across The UK

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

October 20, 2026

A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London disrupted services across the UK on Tuesday, affecting banks, businesses and other digital platforms. Google said the incident was caused by a power event at its cloud operations, with full recovery expected by around 1300 GMT.

The disruption began at 0608 GMT and affected Google Cloud services in the europe-west2 region, which is hosted in London. In an initial update, the company reported elevated error rates and intermittent network failures across multiple services as engineers worked to restore operations.

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Banking Services Hit By The Disruption

Revolut was among the most visibly affected companies, with customers reporting problems with ATM withdrawals, bank transfers and card top-ups. A source close to the matter linked the issues to the Google Cloud outage.

Traditional banks also reported disruptions. Lloyds said some customers were experiencing problems with its app and online banking, while HSBC confirmed difficulties accessing its services. HSBC added that it was monitoring the situation and noted that other organisations were affected as well.

Disruption Spreads Beyond Finance

Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions, recorded hundreds of reports involving other businesses, including property website Rightmove and the Royal Mail postal service. The reports suggested that the outage was affecting multiple parts of the UK’s digital economy.

The incident highlights the risks facing businesses that depend on shared cloud infrastructure. Even a temporary failure at a single provider can disrupt services across several sectors, from banking and payments to logistics and consumer platforms.

Companies Reassure Customers

Revolut said it had been working to resolve the issue since it was identified and apologised to affected customers. The company also confirmed that customers’ money and data remained safe.

As cloud platforms underpin an increasing share of digital commerce, the outage illustrates how disruptions to critical infrastructure can spread far beyond the provider itself, affecting businesses and customers across the economy.