Around 83.5% of recent graduates in the European Union (EU) were employed in 2023, an increase of 1.1 percentage points (p.p.) compared to 2022, with Portugal registering a percentage below the EU average of 82.4%.
The data was released today by the EU’s statistical office, Eurostat, and reveals that last year 83.5% of recent graduates in the EU were employed, which represents an increase of 1.1 p.p. compared to 2022, when this percentage was 82.4%.
It was this same percentage (82.4%) that Portugal recorded in 2023, the ninth lowest in the EU.
These are recent graduates, young people aged between 20 and 34 who have completed their studies in the last one to three years at secondary or higher education level.
By EU country, the overall employment rate of recent graduates was equal to or higher than 80% in 22 member states, with Malta leading the table with 95.8%, followed by the Netherlands (93.2%) and Germany (91.5%).
The lowest graduate employment rates in 2023 were recorded in Italy (67.5%), Greece (72.3%) and Romania (74.8%).
According to Eurostat, in the last 10 years, there has been an increase in the employment rate of recent graduates, since in 2013 the rate was 74.3% and “has been steadily increasing since then”, with the exception of the year of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when there was a percentage of 78.7% and a decrease of 2.3 p.p. compared to 2019 (81.0%).
Also compared to last year, there was a difference of 9.6 p.p. in the employment rate of recent graduates with higher education qualifications (87.7%) compared to those with medium qualifications (78.1%), concludes the Community Statistical Office.
