Romania, the third country in Europe in terms of the share of the population that does not work, although it is of working age. We are after the Italians and Greeks

Almost a third of Romanians of working age do not work, according to new Eurostat data

Romania is an economy in which there are two apparently contradictory situations: many people are unemployed, but there are also enough people who work below their qualifications.

In 2023, the overqualification rate in Romania was around 16% (compared to the EU average of 22%), according to Eurostat data, which considers that an employee is overqualified if he has higher education than the qualification level required by the job. Romanian women have a slightly higher overqualification rate than men, Eurostat also shows. Among EU countries, the overqualification rate was highest in Spain (36%), followed by Greece (31%) and Cyprus (30%).

The lowest rates were recorded in Luxembourg (5%), Denmark and the Czech Republic (each 13%).

In 18 of the 27 EU countries, women had higher overqualification rates than men, with the biggest differences being recorded in Malta and Slovakia (both +8 percentage points (pp)) and Italy (+7 pp).

In 9 EU countries, men had higher overqualification rates, with the biggest differences being recorded in Lithuania (+5 pp), Latvia (+4 pp) and Bulgaria (+3 pp).

Eurostat also measured the employment rates (percentage of employed people out of the total working-age population) in EU member states. The third lowest is in Romania (68.7%), after Italy and Greece.

The highest employment rates were recorded in the Netherlands (84%), Sweden (83%) and Estonia (82%).