The average unemployment rate in 2023 was 6.8% in the city of Bonn and 7.2% in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the surrounding Rhein-Sieg district, the unemployment rate was significantly lower at 5.4% and in the federal government at 5.7%. Compared to the previous year, only the city of Bonn was able to reduce its unemployment rate slightly by 0.1 percentage points. In contrast, the annual average unemployment rates in the Rhein-Sieg district, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government all rose by 0.4 percentage points. In the 10-year period from 2013 to 2023, the unemployment rates in 2019 were the lowest in all four observed spatial units, with the rate in the city of Bonn at 6.3%. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the rates rose in 2020 and 2021. In Bonn, unemployment rates fell particularly sharply in 2022 and slightly in 2023, so that the rate is now below the NRW state average again.

In a comparison of the 20 largest German cities, Bonn ranks seventh with an average unemployment rate of 6.8% in 2023, an improvement on the previous year. All cities together have an average unemployment rate of 7.9% in 2023 (previous year: 7.5%). The cities of Munich (4.5 percent), Münster (4.9 percent) and Stuttgart (5.1 percent) fared the best in comparison. In contrast, the unemployment rates in the Ruhr cities of Duisburg (12.8%), Dortmund (11.5%) and Essen (10.5%) at the other end of the scale are more than twice as high. Bonn's neighboring cities in the Rhineland have the following unemployment rates: Düsseldorf 7.0 percent and Cologne 8.7 percent. It is also worth noting that of all the cities, only Bonn was able to reduce its unemployment rate (slightly by minus 0.1 percentage points).