Eurostat: A fifth of Romania’s workforce lives in other EU member states

In 2017, Romanian nationals of working age (20-64) residing abroad within the EU accounted for about a fifth (19.7 percent) of their co-nationals residing in Romania, Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, shows. This places Romania first in the EU after the indicator on labor mobility.

The next largest shares were recorded by Lithuania (15 percent), Croatia (14 percent), Portugal (13.9 percent), Latvia (12.9 percent) and Bulgaria (12.5 percent).

The EU Member States with the smallest share of mobile nationals (out of the total-country population) are Germany (1.0 percent), the United Kingdom (1.1 percent), Sweden and France (both 1.3 percent).

3.8 percent of European Union (EU) citizens of working age (20-64) were residing in another Member State than that of their citizenship in 2017. This share has increased from 2.5 percent ten years ago.

Tertiary graduates are generally more mobile than the rest of the population. 32.4 percent of mobile EU citizens have tertiary education, while the share for the entire EU population is 30.1 percent. The employment rate of mobile EU citizens is also higher than that of the entire population: 76.1 percent, compared with the total EU employment rate of 72.1 percent.

Compared with 2007, the share of Romanian nationals living in another Member State has increased by 12.3 pp. Latvia (10.0 pp.), Lithuania (9.5 pp.) and Bulgaria (8.0 pp.) also registered a significant increase. At the opposite end of the scale, the share of Cypriot nationals residing abroad decreased from 7.1 percent in 2007 to 3.9 percent in 2017.

For most Member States, a higher share of working age nationals abroad have tertiary education than the home population. This is in particular the case for France (62.5 percent of the French living in another EU Member State have tertiary education, compared with 34.6 percent for the resident population of France) and Germany (54.5 percent and 26.7 percent respectively) where the difference reaches 28 pp.