Regional disparities in transition from education to work (Eurostat)
Regional disparities in transition from education to work National figures alone cannot reveal the full and sometimes complex picture of what is happening within the EU countries.
The Eurostat regional yearbook provides a statistical overview of the regions of the EU across a broad range of subjects including the transition from education to work. The analyses presented are designed to highlight regional variations and similarities.
As highlighted in Eurostat’s regional yearbook, in 2019, the EU employment rate of recent graduates from vocational education programmes in upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education (as covered by ISCED levels 3 and 4) was 79%.
This employment rate was 3 percentage points (pp) below the 2025 EU-level objective for recent graduates from vocational programmes, which aims for at least 82% by 2025.
This rate has since changed to 76% in 2020, which is a decrease of 3 pp compared with 2019.
Analyses of 192 regions
Among the 192 regions for which data are available (for mixed reference periods covering 2018-2020), there were five regions where all recent graduates successfully found work (100%).
These were Flevoland and Zeeland in the Netherlands (both 2020 data), Luxembourg and its neighbouring region of Trier in Germany (both 2019 data), and Övre Norrland in Sweden (also 2019 data).
The lowest employment rates for recent vocational graduates were recorded in southern regions of the EU.
There were 20 regions where less than half of all recent vocational graduates had found work and these were located in: Greece (all four NUTS level 1 regions), predominantly southern regions of Spain (2019 data for Extremadura), predominantly southern regions of Italy, as well as French overseas departments (2019 data).
The lowest regional employment rates of recent graduates from vocational programmes were recorded in three Italian regions: Campania (33%), Calabria (26%) and Sicilia (25%).
