Portugal has one of the lowest rates of job vacancies in the euro area.
Its score was 0.6% while the average in the region was 1.7% for the first three months of 2014.
Spain had the same rate of available work positions, and both countries share joint third place behind only Cyprus (0.2%) and Latvia (0.5%).
These countries have the least job opportunities in all the eurozone.
In fact, they are joined only by Poland as the lowest in all of the 28 members of the European Union.
The job vacancy rate is the proportion of total jobs which are available expressed as a percentage. A job vacancy is considered one for which an employer is taking steps to recruit irrespective of it being a new position or an existing one which needs to be filled.
The most job opportunities are to be found in Germany, the UK, Belgium and Sweden, all of which are above the average.
Throughout the euro area there were, on average, twice as many jobs going in services than in construction and industry.
Following a nadir in the final quarter of 2009, the number of jobs rose to 1.8% in the first months of 2011 but plunged periodically after that. It is now nearly back to the 1.8% available in early 2011, but it has been well over 2% in the years preceding the crash.
The provision of these quarterly job vacancies figures is a new service provided by Eurostat, our favourite number cruncher.
