Europe: a degree's edge is fading — smaller than in 2005 in 19 of 28 countries
Across the EU, unemployment at 25–29 with a degree and with upper secondary: 9.0% and 11.3% in 2005, 6.8% and 7.6% in 2025; the gap narrowed from 2.3 to 0.8 points.
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A degree usually shields the young from unemployment: graduates find work more often than peers with school or vocational education. In most European countries that shield has weakened over twenty years. It does not mean a degree is useless: pay is not covered here.
Unemployment at 25–29 across the EU: blue with tertiary education, orange with upper secondary. The closer the lines, the smaller the edge of a degree. The count of countries in the headline is in the facts below.
- European countries: degree edge smaller / larger than in 2005 countries
19 / 9 (28)
Eurostat: EU Labour Force Survey (lfsa_urgaed); Macroscope calculation
- The EU as a whole: unemployment at 25–29, tertiary / upper secondary %
2005: 9.0 / 11.3; 2025: 6.8 / 7.6
Eurostat: EU Labour Force Survey (lfsa_urgaed); Macroscope calculation
Eurostat EU Labour Force Survey (lfsa_urgaed): unemployment at 25–29 with tertiary education (levels 5–8) and with upper secondary or post-secondary (3–4). The edge is the second divided by the first; 2005 (or the first year with data up to 2008) against the latest year.
Gone entirely, with graduates no less often unemployed than peers with upper secondary: Denmark, Czechia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Turkey, Netherlands, Germany and Croatia. Across the EU the gap did not narrow evenly: 0.5 points in 2020, 1.7 again in 2022. Unemployment counts those working or looking for work. The survey has series breaks in 2014 and 2021 (a new regulation in 2021). In Greece young graduates have been jobless more often than school leavers in most years since 1992; that is a separate card.
A question for this picture
And in the US? Young graduates have been unemployed more often than workers overall for more than five years.