Employment of Recent University Graduates in Europe: Where Are Job Prospects Strongest?

Education plays a major role in the labor market. According to Eurostat, higher levels of education are typically associated with higher employment rates and greater lifetime earnings.

However, for many recent graduates, finding a job can still take time. Competition is intense. In the UK, for instance, employers received more than 1.2 million applications for just under 17,000 graduate vacancies in 2024, according to the Institute of Student Employers (ISE). This means each graduate position attracted an average of 140 applications.

This marks the highest level of competition in more than three decades, since the ISE began collecting such data in 1991.

On average, 84.9% of Europeans aged 20–34 who completed tertiary education within the past three years were employed in 2024. Countries such as Bulgaria (93.7%), Estonia (93.6%), the Netherlands (92.7%), and Norway (92.3%) recorded the strongest performance, with more than nine in ten recent graduates already in work. The dataset does not provide a detailed time breakdown. However, it includes two categories, ‘three years or less’ and ‘from one to three years’ after graduation, which are both presented in the chart. 

In eight countries, the employment rate of recent tertiary graduates exceeds 90%. Besides Bulgaria, these include Estonia (93.6%), the Netherlands (92.7%), Norway (92.3%), Iceland (92.0%), Germany (91.9%), as well as Hungary and Poland (both 90.5%). According to Euronews, these figures reflect not only robust labor markets but also stronger alignment between university training and employer needs.

Among the EU’s four largest economies, Italy and France stand out, with more than one in five recent graduates not in employment. Spain performs slightly better, with an employment rate of 82%, but remains close to France’s level. Germany, on the other hand, records the highest employment rate within the first three years after graduation, at 91.9%.

Greece records the lowest rate at 72.7% among EU member states. Turkey, which ranks at the bottom of the list, also has the highest labor market slack in Europe, reaching 25.8% in the second quarter of 2025. 

In Turkey, the OECD notes a persistent mismatch between university output and labor market demand. Rapid expansion in higher education has outpaced job creation, and graduates in non-STEM fields face the greatest challenges. Turkey is also the only European country where university graduates have a higher unemployment rate than the general population.

Persistent gender gap across the EU

Across the European Union, men remain slightly more likely to find jobs after university, with an average employment rate of 86% compared with 84% for women. However, gender dynamics differ sharply between countries. In Greece, for example, young women outperform men by more than seven percentage points, while Turkey shows the opposite trend: 74.2% of men versus 55.2% of women employed, a 19-point gap, the widest in Europe. In contrast, Norway records the highest rate, with 93.3% of recent graduates employed.

Despite regional and gender disparities, Eurostat data confirm that education remains one of the strongest predictors of employment and income. Across the EU, people with tertiary qualifications earn 38% more than those with medium-level education, and 68% more than those with only basic schooling.

Source: https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/10/14/employment-of-recent-university-graduates-in-europe-which-countries-offer-the-best-job-pro