Disparities in employment and education across European Union member states

Abstract

The article focuses on disparities in education and employment. The main aim is to evaluate scope and scale of disparities in education and employment among the EU Member States. The spatial scope of the research covers 27 EU Member States. The time scope of the research covers the period 2016–2023 (selected four years, in particular: 2016, 2019, 2020, 2023). The following hypothesis was verified during the research: Disparities in education and employment between EU countries are widening. The study was carried out using two selected methods of multivariate comparative analysis, namely Hellwig taxonomic measure of development (TMD) and standard deviations’ method of grouping linearly ordered objects.
The significance of balanced development was stressed numerous times in the EU documents. The EU Action Plan for European Pillar of Social Rights emphasized the need to achieve high employment rate, reduce gender employment gap, lower early school leavers from education and training rate, promote tertiary education attainment and adult participation in learning. The necessity to solve the problem of young people NEET was also underlined.
The conducted research confirmed the truth of the hypothesis assuming increasing disparities in employment and education across EU countries. The largest employment and education disparities are between the Scandinavian countries and Romania, Greece, Italy, Spain. The Scandinavian countries are distinguished by high employment rates, really low gender employment gaps, extremely high enrollment in higher education and life-long learning, relatively low NEET rates. As for the countries that make up the G1 group, their situation is due to coupled problems such as low employment rates, high NEET rates, relatively high unemployment rates, as well as large gender employment gaps and extremely low intensity of adult participation in training.
The persistence and rise of disparities in education and employment between EU Member States is a serious problem for the EU, as this situation makes it difficult to create a more cohesive and convergent European Union. Therefore, active actions should be advocated to promote education and greater professional activity in those EU countries that struggle most with the problem of low employment and education.