On average in 2021, the unemployment rate was 7.7% in the city of Bonn and 7.3% in the state of NRW. In the surrounding Rhein-Sieg district, the unemployment rate was significantly lower at 5.6% and in the federal government at 5.7%. Compared to the previous year, when unemployment rates rose significantly everywhere, rather minor changes could be observed this year. In Bonn, for example, the rate rose slightly by 0.2 percentage points, in the Rhein-Sieg district it remained unchanged, and in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the federal government the rates were down slightly by 0.2 percentage points. Over the 10-year period from 2011 to 2021, unemployment rates were lowest in 2019 in all four observed spatial units, with a rate of 6.3% in the city of Bonn. With the Corona pandemic, the successes in the labor market and the declining unemployment rates in the longer time frame suffered a damper from 2020 onward.

In a comparison of the 20 largest German cities, Bonn is in the middle of all the cities considered with an average unemployment rate of 7.7% in 2021. All cities together have an average unemployment rate of 8.1% in 2021 (previous year: 8.2%). The cities of Munich (4.8%), Münster (4.9%) and Stuttgart (5.1%) perform comparatively well. By contrast, unemployment rates in the Ruhr area cities of Duisburg (12.3%), Dortmund (11.4%) and Essen (10.8%) are more than twice as high at the other end of the scale. Bonn's neighboring cities in the Rhineland have the following unemployment rates: Düsseldorf 7.8% and Cologne 9.3%.