Jobs in High-Tech Industries Are Most Common in the Regions of EU Capitals

Where one job in seven is in high tech

In 2025, 14.3% of the people in work in Bratislavský kraj, the region formed by the Slovak capital and the districts around it, were employed in high-tech industries: about one job in seven, the largest share of any region in the European Union. Praha, the region that is the city of Prague, followed at 12.9%, then Budapest at 12.7% and Grad Zagreb, the City of Zagreb, at 12.2%.

Eight more regions come before the first one without a national capital in it. Eastern and Midland, the Irish region that includes Dublin, records 11.6%; Warszawski stołeczny, Warsaw and the counties around it, 11.5%; Sostinės regionas, the region of Vilnius, 11.3%; Hovedstaden, the Copenhagen region, 11.2%; Stockholm 10.8%; Yugozapaden, the south-west of Bulgaria including Sofia, 10.2%; Berlin 10.0%; and Helsinki-Uusimaa, the region of Helsinki, 9.9%. The twelve highest shares in the Union therefore all belong to regions that contain their country's capital, and the first eleven are the only regions where at least one job in ten is in these industries. None of the twelve values carries a flag.

What the table counts as high-tech

Eurostat draws the line by industry, not by occupation. Two kinds of manufacturing count: pharmaceuticals, and computers, electronic and optical products. So do six kinds of service: film, television and music production; radio and television broadcasting; telecommunications; computer programming and IT consultancy; information services such as data processing, hosting and web portals; and scientific research and development. In NACE, the EU's classification of economic activities, these are divisions 21 and 26 of manufacturing and divisions 59 to 63 and 72 of services.

Everyone employed in those industries is counted, whatever their job: a sales manager at a drug maker is in the figure, while a software engineer working for a car maker or a bank is not. The share is taken of all employed people aged 15 to 74 who live in the region, as measured by the EU Labour Force Survey, the household survey every Member State runs on common rules.

These industries are a narrow slice of a wider group Eurostat calls knowledge-intensive activities. Every one of them belongs to that group, which also takes in finance, law and accounting, education, health and public administration.

The capital comes first in twenty countries

The table is drawn on NUTS 2, the middle tier of the classification Eurostat uses to divide the Union into territories of broadly comparable population, 244 regions in all. Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg and Malta are a single region each; the other 22 Member States are divided into several. In 20 of those 22, the region containing the capital has the highest share in the country.

The size of the lead varies a great deal. Bratislavský kraj's 14.3% is three times that of the next Slovak region, Východné Slovensko in the east of the country, at 4.7%: a lead of 9.6 points by derived difference, the widest of any capital region. Berlin's is the narrowest, 0.9 points over Karlsruhe, the administrative region in the north-west of Baden-Württemberg, at 9.1%. Of the twenty capital regions that lead their country, Attiki, the region of Athens, has the lowest share, 5.7%.

Belgium and the Netherlands are the two exceptions, and in both the leader lies next to the capital. In Belgium it is Walloon Brabant, the province south of Brussels, at 9.8%, ahead of the Brussels-Capital Region at 8.2%; Flemish Brabant, the province that encircles the capital region, comes third at 7.4%. In the Netherlands the province of Utrecht, at 8.1%, is ahead of Noord-Holland, the province of Amsterdam, at 6.8%.

In both exceptions the way the survey counts people may play a part. It records each worker in the region where they live, not the one where they work, so a resident of Walloon Brabant employed by a software firm in Brussels counts in Walloon Brabant. How much of the province's lead that explains, the table cannot say.

The widest gaps are in the countries at the top

The three Member States in which the highest and the lowest region lie furthest apart are the three whose capital regions head the EU ranking. In Czechia the derived gap is 11.2 percentage points: 12.9% in Prague against 1.7% in Severozápad, the north-western corner of the country, a share less than a seventh of the capital's. In Slovakia it is 10.5 points, between Bratislavský kraj and Západné Slovensko, the west of the country beyond the capital region, at 3.8%. In Hungary it is 9.9 points, between Budapest and Dél-Alföld, the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain, at 2.8%.

Croatia follows at 9.4 points, between the City of Zagreb and Jadranska Hrvatska, the Adriatic coast, at 2.8%. In Slovakia and in Croatia no region other than the capital's reaches 5%. Poland comes next at 8.8 points and Denmark at 8.6, where Syddanmark, the south of the country, records 2.6% against 11.2% in the Copenhagen region.

Every one of these gaps is measured between values Eurostat publishes without a reliability warning, and Poland's would be wider on the flagged ones. Its lowest unflagged region is Lubelskie, in the east, at 2.7%; three Polish regions publish lower values carrying the low-reliability flag and four publish none. Counting the flagged 1.8% of Mazowiecki regionalny, the part of Mazowieckie province outside the Warsaw capital region, the Polish gap would be 9.7 points, ahead of Croatia's.

At the other end, the two Slovenian regions are the closest pair: Zahodna Slovenija, the western half that includes Ljubljana, records 7.9% and Vzhodna Slovenija, the east, 4.9%, 3.0 points apart.

Outside the capitals

Walloon Brabant is thirteenth in the Union, the first region on the list without a capital. Karlsruhe and Southern, the Irish region that takes in Cork and Limerick, both record 9.1%, and Oberbayern, Upper Bavaria around Munich, 8.9%. Of the 25 highest shares, 20 are in capital regions; the other five are those four and Utrecht. Among the regions just below them are two more that ring a capital: Pest, the county that surrounds Budapest, at 7.6%, and Flemish Brabant at 7.4%.

The bottom of the ranking

Among the values published without a reliability warning, the lowest is Calabria's, at the southern tip of Italy, at 1.3%. Bratislavský kraj's share is eleven times larger, by derived ratio. Nord-Est, in north-eastern Romania, records 1.4% and Sud-Muntenia, the region that surrounds Bucharest, 1.5%. Five regions sit lower still, and every one of those values is flagged by Eurostat as of low reliability: Sud-Est in Romania at 0.8%, Thessalia and Peloponnisos in Greece at 1.1%, and Ipeiros in Greece and Poitou-Charentes in western France at 1.2%, the French value also flagged as differing in definition.

Half of the 225 regions with a value are at 4.2% or less, under a third of the Bratislava region's share. Romania shows the distance inside a single country: four of its eight regions are below 2%, three of them without a reliability warning, while Bucureşti-Ilfov, the capital and its surrounding county, records 9.4%.

A rise almost everywhere, across a break

In 2014 no region of today's 27 Member States had one job in ten in these industries; the highest was Eastern and Midland, at 9.8%. In 2025 eleven did. Of the 209 regions with a value under the same code in both years, 196 recorded a higher share in 2025, ten a lower one and three the same.

That comparison crosses 1 January 2021, when the EU Labour Force Survey moved to a new legal framework and Eurostat marked a break in every Member State's series, as well as earlier and later breaks in individual countries. The rise is not the break alone: the share went up in 137 of 210 regions between 2014 and 2019, before it, and in 147 of 220 between 2021 and 2025, after it. How large the rise was, the series cannot say with precision.

The top was already made of capitals. In 2014 nine of the ten highest shares were in capital regions, and the other was Walloon Brabant. What moved is the order. Bratislavský kraj was sixth in 2014, at 8.7%, and Sostinės regionas, at 4.4% that year, recorded the largest rise of any region over the period, to 11.3%. Since 2021, under the current survey framework, the largest rise is the City of Zagreb's, from 8.0% to 12.2%.