Persons employed in water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation

Number of persons who work in enterprises of water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation (NACE Rev. 2 section E): employees plus working proprietors, partners working regularly in the enterprise and unpaid family workers. A head count, not full-time equivalents. Eurostat structural business statistics.

Eurostat structural business statistics. From 2021 the series come from sbs_ovw_act under Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics; 2005 to 2020 come from the earlier table sbs_na_sca_r2. Values for 2021 are flagged as a break: value added moved from factor cost to basic prices and some activities changed coverage, so the change from 2020 to 2021 is not all real. Amounts are published in euros for every country, including those outside the euro area. Not the same as active_companies (INE business register, Spain) or employer_firms (US Census Bureau).

Key facts

Figures last updated on 2026-10-12.

Rankings

EU countries by persons employed in water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation, 2024

Top 15. Source: Eurostat, European Commission.

Germany: 315,362 personsGermany315,362France: 264,937 personsFrance264,937Italy: 234,818 personsItaly234,818Spain: 181,689 personsSpain181,689Poland: 151,377 personsPoland151,377Romania: 87,403 personsRomania87,403Czechia: 55,928 personsCzechia55,928Hungary: 45,468 personsHungary45,468Portugal: 40,359 personsPortugal40,359Netherlands: 31,786 personsNetherlands31,786Croatia: 31,679 personsCroatia31,679Bulgaria: 30,796 personsBulgaria30,796Belgium: 28,445 personsBelgium28,445Sweden: 26,756 personsSweden26,756Austria: 22,771 personsAustria22,771
persons. Source: Eurostat, Structural business statistics, Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation (NACE Rev. 2 section E), persons employed, number (sbs_ovw_act). Retrieved 2026-10-12.

Full ranking of EU countries

Places with data

Published for world, eu and euro area, countries.

World, EU and euro area

Countries

Use this data in your AI agent

Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:

Which places have the highest persons employed in water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"sbs_persons_employed_water_waste","level":"country","within":"European Union (27)"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=sbs_persons_employed_water_waste&level=country&within=European%20Union%20(27)

Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor in one step. The trial answers 25 calls a day without an account.