Cyprus had the third highest over-qualification rate in the EU in 2024, with women tending to be more overqualified than men, according to data on the labour market published by Eurostat.
Over-qualification is when people with tertiary education are employed in occupations that do not require such a high level of education.
In 2024, the EU over-qualification rate was 21.3%, with 20.5% for men and 22.0% for women. Among the EU countries, the over-qualification rate was highest in Spain (35.0%), followed by Greece (33.0%) and Cyprus (28.2%). Meanwhile, Luxembourg (4.7%), Croatia (12.6%) and Czechia (12.8%) recorded the lowest rates.
In Cyprus, the difference between the shares of overqualified workers by sex was even larger, with 31.2% for women and 24.6% for men.
In 21 of the 27 EU countries, women had higher over-qualification rates than men, with some of the largest differences recorded in Italy (7.7 pp), Slovakia (6.4 pp) and Malta (5.3 pp).
However, in 6 EU countries, men had higher over-qualification rates, with the biggest differences recorded in Lithuania (5.2 pp), Latvia (2.6 pp) and Estonia (2.5 pp).
Regarding the overall share of employed people aged 20 to 64 in the EU, the share reached 75.8% (197.6 million people) in 2024, the highest recorded since the start of the time series in 2009. The employment rate was up 0.5 percentage points (pp) compared with 2023 and 1.2 pp compared with 2022.
Among the EU countries, the highest employment rates were recorded in the Netherlands (83.5%), Malta (83.0%) and Czechia (82.3%). The lowest rates were recorded in Italy (67.1%), Greece (69.3%) and Romania (69.5%).
In Cyprus, employment share reached 79.8% in 2024, according to the same data.
Also read: Eurostat: High rate of formal childcare participation in Cyprus
Source: CNA
