In the second quarter of 2020, the EU employment rate (for people aged 20-64) was 66% for women and 77% for men. This gender employment gap was seen across all levels of education. However, the lower the education level, the wider the gap was between the employment rates for men and women.
The gender employment gap between men and women with low educational attainment level was 21 percentage points (pp), more than triple the employment gap among highly-educated men and women (6 pp). The employment rate for men with a low educational level was 64%, while for women it was 43%. By contrast, for people with a high level of education, the employment rate was 87% for men and 81% for women.
In addition, over three-quarters of men with a medium level of education (77%) were employed, compared with under two-thirds of women (65%). This corresponds to a gender employment gap of 12 pp.
Source dataset: lfsq_ergaed
The gender employment gap between men and women with a low education level decreased from 22.1 pp in the second quarter of 2019 to 21.3 pp in the second quarter of 2020.
In contrast, the gender employment gap for those with a medium level of education increased from 12.0 pp to 12.5 pp in the second quarter of 2020. However, the gender employment gap for highly educated people remained stable at around 6 pp.
For more information about quarterly employment, you can read our Statistics Explained articles: Employment - quarterly statistics and Employment in detail - quarterly statistics.
Note:
- Data not available for Germany. Due to technical issues with the introduction of the new German system of integrated household surveys, including the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the figures for Germany for the first and second quarter 2020 are not direct estimates from LFS microdata, but based on a larger sample including additional data from other integrated household surveys. For more information: see here.
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
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