About 82 per cent of recent graduates in the EU were employed in 2022, raising the share of employment rate among this category by seven percentage points in the eight-year period, with only the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily slowing down the trend.
According to Eurostat, the European Office for Statistics, the employment rate in 2022 broke records, reaching 82 per cent – up by one per cent from 2018 records.
“In 2022, 82 per cent of recent graduates (ISCED 2011 levels 3-8) aged 20-34 in the EU were employed. From 2014 to 2022, the employment rate for this group rose by seven percentage points (pp),” the agency states.
The employment rates vary between the two genders, with male graduates being more often employed than their peers. In 2022, the difference in employment between male and female graduates was reduced to two percentage points, the lowest recorded between 2014 and 2022, unlike 2019 rates when the gap was four percentage points.
The average percentage of employment rates of recent graduates in the EU was 82.4 per cent – up from 75 per cent in 2014, while the share of employment rates depending on gender is higher for males (83.5 per cent) compared to women (81.3 per cent).
However, employment rates between the genders have increased significantly since 2014, with employment rates between male graduates increasing from 76.9 per cent, scoring a 6.6 per cent increase, while the employment rate for women was 73.1 per cent – 8.2 percentage points less than in 2022.
As per countries individually, employment rates of recent graduates were the highest in Luxembourg and the Netherlands, with 93 per cent of graduates in this category being employed, followed by Germany and Malta, with 92 and 91 per cent of recent graduates in these countries being hired, respectively.
Other countries with high employment rates include Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with 89.7, 88.1 and 85.1 per cent of new graduates being hired, in addition to countries like Ireland (87.2 per cent), Hungary (88.9 per cent) and Austria (88.4 per cent).
Interestingly enough, the employment rates of recent graduates were very diverse among the Baltic countries, with Estonia having the lowest rate – 77.4 per cent, while Lithuania had an 83.4 per cent employment rate for recent graduates. On the other hand, Latvia has the highest percentage share of new graduates being employed – a total of 85.3 per cent.
Furthermore, the lowest rate of employment among recent graduates was in Italy, with 65 per cent of them being employed, followed by Greece and Romania, with 66 and 70 per cent of graduates being hired as of 2022.
France and Spain, in addition to Croatia and Bulgaria, are in the group of countries where the share of new graduates that are employed is between 70 to 80 per cent.
