The table provides education and employment statistics for eight European nations in 2015. Included are employment and higher education rates, as well as figures for average income.
First of all, it is interesting to note that the amount of income differs greatly across the continent, with citizens of Norway earning more than twelve times as much as those of Bulgaria, with €41,483 and €3,332 respectively. There is a much less variation in the other categories. What is most clear is that the eight nations can be split into two groups of four which share similar statistics. Bulgaria, Greece, Latvia and Portugal are generally the lowest average earners, with the poorest employment rates and the lowest numbers of university graduates. The other four countries – United Kingdom, Austria, Luxembourg and Norway “” form a separate group which is generally on the opposite end of each scale.
The exceptions to this general observation are that Austria has a lower proportion of adults educated to degree level (30.6%) than Latvia (31.6%), while Luxembourg has a lower employment rate (66.10%) than Latvia (68.10%).
Overall, we can see that countries with the highest proportion of adults educated to degree level tend also to both be the highest earners and to have the highest level of employment.