Using data from the European Labour Force Survey, we measure the contribution of workers' flows to the change in the unemployment rate in some EU countries during 2006-2012, highlighting the main socio-demographics characteristics of the individuals transiting between employment and unemployment. Besides, we analyse the role of labour market institutions on the change of the aggregate flow for each socio-demographic group across country during the crisis. For the socio-demographic

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... s, we observe that age, to a larger extent than educational attainments, are the main determinants of flows from employment into unemployment, particularly in those countries where unemployment increased by most. This suggests that labour market institutions together with the employment policies followed during the crisis (or the lack of them) have very much conditioned the employment adjustments during the Great Recession in EU labour markets. Finally, we examine if the crisis has encouraged a reallocation of the labour force to more productive sector. We still do not find evidence in favour of this issue in the European countries with the particular exception of Spain and Greece.