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Cyprus Employment Rises As Unemployment Continues To Decline

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.

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.

Copyright Law Struggles To Keep Up With AI Training

Courts Are Still Applying Old Copyright Rules To AI

AI companies train models on enormous amounts of published material, including books, articles and academic research. Whether using that content without authors’ permission violates copyright law remains unresolved.

Much of the debate centres on fair use, which allows copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain circumstances. Courts consider factors such as the purpose of the use, how much material was involved and its impact on the original market.

Anthropic Case Sets An Important Precedent

A major case involving Anthropic and a group of authors provided one of the clearest rulings so far. Judge William Alsup found that using copyrighted books to train AI models was lawful, comparing the process to people reading and studying literature before creating something new.

Anthropic was nevertheless ordered to pay $1.5 billion in a settlement. The penalty concerned books the company had obtained from illegal online libraries rather than the AI training itself.

For AI companies, that distinction could prove significant because it separates studying copyrighted material from directly copying it.

Competition Could Be The Key Issue

A case involving Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence offers a different perspective. A court ruled that Ross could not claim fair use after using Reuters’ copyrighted material to develop a competing AI-powered legal research platform.

The decision suggests courts may be less willing to consider AI training fair use when copyrighted content is used to build a product that directly competes with the original.

For authors, an unresolved question is whether AI-generated content should be considered competition for the works used to train these models.

The Law Has Yet To Catch Up

US copyright law predates generative AI by decades, leaving courts to apply old principles to new technology. Questions also remain over copyright protection for AI-generated works. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, a court ruled that material created entirely by AI cannot receive copyright protection.

Major AI companies remain involved in copyright litigation, and different courts could reach different conclusions. For now, there is no universal rule: the legality of AI training will depend on the circumstances of each case and how courts ultimately interpret copyright and fair use.

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