Spain is close to full employment among citizens with higher education: only 5.7% are unemployed, but it still has the second-worst figure in the EU.

Spain is approaching full employment among citizens with higher education, as only 5.7% were unemployed at the end of the second quarter, according to the latest Labor Force Survey, practically half the national unemployment rate of 10.3%.

This is the lowest figure reported by the INE in its series, which began in 2014. However, an analysis of Eurostat data, which dates back to the beginning of the century, reveals that this is the lowest unemployment rate for this group since 2007 , when it stood at 5.3%.

This means that while the overall rate is still two and a half percentage points above its historic low, among those with higher education, we are only four-tenths of a percentage point away from reaching it.

Behind these percentages, what we find is that there are only 631,000 people in Spain with higher education (university or similar) who want to work and cannot find work, compared to the 774,500 there were before the pandemic (in the same comparable quarter) or the 1,227,100 there were in 2014.

The reduction in unemployment among graduates has been more dramatic than among the rest. Thus, while unemployment among this group has fallen by a third in the last decade (from 15.8% in 2014 to 5.7% in the second quarter of this year), the decline has been slower in other segments. Among citizens who have completed Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) and have also completed non-tertiary education, the unemployment rate has fallen by just over half (from 27% to 11.3%); while among those who have only completed ESO, unemployment has fallen from 25% to 11.5%.

As the population's qualification level decreases, the unemployment rate increases. It stands at 24.5% for those who have not even completed primary school; 22% for those with only that level of education; 14.6% for those who have completed two years of compulsory secondary education but have not finished it; 11.5% for those who have; 11.3% for those who have completed some further education; and 5.7% for those with higher education. Illiterates have an unemployment rate of 22.3%.

Although higher education is a better guarantee of finding a job, rates vary by age, as finding a job is no longer as easy for younger people . The unemployment rate for graduates aged 20 to 24 is 16.3%; for those aged 25 to 29, it is 9.1%; and for those over 30, it is already around 4-5%.

Even so, having an education provides more opportunities. In the last decade, while the number of employed people in Spain has grown by 24.6%, the increase has been much greater among citizens with higher education (39.7%). Employment has grown by 37.4% among those with post-secondary education; by 17.9% among those who have completed compulsory secondary education; and by 12.2% among those with only the first two years. However, the number of employed people with only primary education has fallen by 24.7%, and the number of those employed without even primary education has fallen by 7.7%.

European comparison

The improvement in the ratio of unemployed graduates in Spain has not been enough to improve its relative position in the EU , where Spain remains the second worst country , just as it was ten years ago, only behind Greece - which at the end of 2024 had an unemployment rate of 7.3% for this group .

According to data from the end of 2024, the European average unemployment rate for people with higher education stood at 3.8% , with neighboring countries like Italy having a rate of 3.4%, almost half that of Spain. The most advanced countries were Poland and the Czech Republic, where only 1.4% of the population with higher education was unemployed, followed by Bulgaria (1.6%), Hungary (1.8%), and Romania (1.9%).

Among the reasons behind the high unemployment rate for this group in Spain compared to other European countries are reasons such as the mismatch between the professions in demand in the labor market and the careers young people are choosing; the limited inter-regional mobility , which makes it difficult to fill vacancies in geographical areas other than those from which graduates come; or the high proportion of workers or candidates with a university degree (the so-called "titulitis ") compared to other countries, to the detriment, for example, of vocational training graduates, who represent too small a segment of the total workforce.