28. How many low-educated adults are employed?

Low educational attainment reduces adult employability and labour mobility. VET can improve labour market prospects of low-educated adults, as a route to further skill development at the same or at higher educational levels. 

The indicator below is the percentage of the population aged 20 to 64 with a low level of education attainment (ISCED 0-2) who are employed. It can be compared the overall employment rate for 20- to 64-year-olds.

Employment rate for 20–64-year-olds with lower level of educational attainment (%)

Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (LFS).

Key points

In 2020, the EU employment rate for low-educated adults was 55.1%, far below the average rate for all adults of the corresponding age group (72.3%). Portugal had the highest employment rate for low-educated adults at 69.6%, followed by Malta (65.1%) and Cyprus (64.0%). The rate was the lowest in Slovakia (34.0%) and Croatia (38.5%). 

Between 2015 and 2020 the EU employment rate for low-educated adults grew by 3.4 percentage points. There was an increase in all Member States for which data are comparable, except Luxembourg (-1.5 percentage points), Croatia (-0.8%) and Slovenia (-0.6%). The growth was largest in Czechia (+14.5 percentage points), Malta (+9.2%), Bulgaria (+9.1%) and Cyprus (+8.9%). A break in time series for data for 2020 for Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Sweden means that they cannot be reliably compared with data for 2015. 

Among non-EU countries, North Macedonia (37.1%) had the lowest employment rate for low-educated adults in 2020. This was lower than the rate for all the other EU Member States but Slovakia. In contrast, the employment rate in Iceland was 72.2%, higher than in any of the EU Member States. The most considerable growth in the period 2015–20 was in Serbia (more than seven percentage points), while the biggest contraction was in Turkey (-3.8%).

Table 28. Employment rate for 20–64-year-olds with lower level of educational attainment (%)

Source: Eurostat, EU Labour Force Survey (LFS). Notes: (b) ‘break in time series’; (p) ‘provisional’; data are not presented when they are not available and/or do not support sufficiently reliable comparisons across countries or over time.