More than one in four young Europeans aged 15 to 29 will be working and studying at the same time in 2024, according to the latest figures from Eurostat.
This situation was most common in the Netherlands (74.3%), Denmark (56.4%) and Germany (45.8%).
In contrast, Romania (2.4%), Greece (6%) and Croatia (6.4%) reported the lowest shares among EU countries.
While financial concerns are the main motivator for working alongside studies, experts say students’ motivations can vary depending on their hometown and field of study.
“Some students are primarily motivated by financial reasons, while others use work placements or unpaid internships to gain work experience and improve their employability,” Madeleine Nightingale, research leader at Rand Europe, a non-profit research organization, told Europe in Motion.
According to Nightingale, financial need is “likely to vary across EU member states depending on their student funding arrangements, although the latter is more common in certain sectors such as law, finance and the creative industries.”
“This may also vary by socio-economic background, as for some students paid work is an economic necessity,” she said.
Furthermore, student participation in paid work will also be affected by broader labor market trends. For example, a Dutch study argues that an increase in paid work for students is associated with an increase in flexible employment practices in the Netherlands.
Nevertheless, according to Eurostat, the majority of young people in Europe are not working during their studies, with more than seven in ten young people remaining outside the labor force while pursuing higher education.
On the other hand, 3.2% of respondents were unemployed, but they were actively looking for work.
The highest unemployment rates among young people with formal education were Sweden (14.1%), Finland (10%) and Denmark (9.6%).
Meanwhile, less than 1% of young people are looking for work in Romania (0.6%), Croatia, the Czech Republic and Hungary (0.8% each).
Why are the prices different for men and women?
74.4% of women aged 15 to 19 have dropped out of the labor market, compared to 70.4% of men of the same age.
As the age group increases, from 20 to 24 years old, the proportion of the non-labor force population decreases to 30.9% for women and 24.8% for men.
Eurostat pointed out that this shows that integration into the labor market is progressing in parallel with educational activities.
In this age group, the percentage of young people who found employment while attending school was 19.6% for women and 17% for men.
Furthermore, the employment rate for young people aged 25 to 29 reached 62% for women and 71.9% for men. Here, the proportion of women not in the labor force and not in formal education (16.2%) was higher than men (6.9%).
This may suggest that they prefer to focus on education while they are young.
The data also shows that women tend to have more formal education than men.
However, if they are less educated, they are less likely to be employed or look for work, as evidenced by lower employment rates and higher inactivity compared to men.
