A recent analysis by Euronews Business has found that Czechia has a relatively poor employment rate among recent university graduates on a Europe-wide level. This is perhaps a surprising result, given the country’s historically low overall unemployment rate.

Moreover, the gender gap in graduate employment is significantly wider than the EU average, with female graduates losing out.


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The research, drawing on Eurostat data, examined employment outcomes for recent higher education graduates across Europe. Euronews says it aimed to assess how effectively university qualifications translate into labor market success and to identify regional patterns in graduate employment.

The analysis compared employment rates among people aged 20 to 34 across 33 European countries. It categorised graduates by time since graduation, interviewing people who had graduated one to three years earlier.

A poor showing compared to neighbors

In Czechia, 86.3 percent of young people who graduated recently are in work—below the EU average of 86.7. This puts Czechia as 12th-worst in the ranking. The country performs substantially worse than neighbors Slovakia (91.4 percent), Poland (92.1), and Germany (92.2).

Austria also outperformed Czechia, posting 88.8 percent. On the positive side, Czechia boasted higher graduate employment rates than Luxembourg, France, and Italy. 

Fellow Visegrad Four member Hungary showed impressive results too in comparison to Czechia, with 93 percent of young graduates finding work.

Women worse off in finding work

Women in Czechia face more than just pay gaps. They also struggle to find jobs after graduation. In Czechia, 89.3 percent of men graduating in the last one to three years were in a job, substantially more than the 83.2 percent of female respondents.

This is worse than the EU average, which sees 86 percent of men employed versus 84 percent of women. Neighboring Poland scores particularly well in this category, with a difference of just 0.2 percentage points. Austria also shows less of a gap, as does Germany. Slovakia, conversely, shows a larger gulf in gendered unemployment.

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Overall, the study unveiled how Bulgaria had the highest employment rates of recent university graduates, whereas Turkey had the lowest. When it comes to gender employment gaps, Turkey posted by far the largest (nearly 20 percentage points in favor of men), whereas Cyprus post near-identical employment rates across both genders. 

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