Skills mismatch persists for young workers in Cyprus and wider EU

Cyprus is close to the EU average in how often young people work in jobs related to what they studied, pointing to a persistent skills mismatch across European labour markets, Eurostat data showed.

In 2024, around 57 per cent of people aged 15-34 in Cyprus with medium or high education reported a ‘very high or high’ match between their field of education and their current or last main job, compared with an EU average of 56.4 per cent.

The indicator measures how relevant a person’s studies are to the requirements of their job, on a scale from very high to no match.

Across the EU, results varied notably by education level. Among those with medium education, 46.1 per cent reported a strong match, while the share rose to 68.1 per cent among higher-education graduates.

Differences were even clearer across fields of study. Health and welfare showed the closest alignment, with 80.6 per cent of highly educated young people working directly in their field. Information and communication technologies followed at 77 per cent, while education reached 73.6 per cent.

By contrast, broader academic disciplines were less closely linked to employment.

Among highly educated young people, 52.2 per cent of arts and humanities graduates struggled to find relevant work, followed by social sciences, journalism and information (59.1 per cent) and services (59.3 per cent).

At country level, Latvia (76.5 per cent), Lithuania (76.1 per cent) and Germany (75.2 per cent) recorded the highest shares of strong matches, while Italy (41.6 per cent), Slovakia (46.2 per cent) and Denmark (47.1 per cent) recorded the lowest.