Five in Six Graduate Migrants in Greece Work Below Their Qualification

A different failure from unemployment

Over-qualification counts people who hold a tertiary qualification and work in a job classified as not requiring one. It is measured only among those in work, which makes it a distinct question from whether migrants find employment at all.

A country can have migrants in work and still be wasting what they know.

Across the EU in 2025, 41.4% of employed non-EU citizens with a degree were over-qualified, against 20.0% of nationals. Two in five, against one in five.

Greece

Greece records 85.3%. Of employed non-EU citizens holding a tertiary qualification, roughly five in six work in jobs that do not require one.

Against a Greek national rate of 31.2% — itself high — the gap is 54.1 percentage points, by far the largest on any indicator in this category.

Greece also has the narrowest unemployment gap in the Union, at effectively zero. The two findings sit together and neither cancels the other: non-EU citizens in Greece find work at about the same rate as Greeks, and the work they find bears almost no relation to their qualifications.

That combination is the strongest argument available for why employment rates alone are an inadequate measure of integration. On the unemployment ranking Greece looks like the Union's success story. On this one it is its clearest failure.

Southern Europe, and the Baltic exception

Italy records 59.5%, Spain 52.3% and Portugal 52.3%. Estonia at 60.0% is the entry that does not fit the southern pattern.

The southern European figures are consistent with labour markets in which non-EU citizens are concentrated in agriculture, domestic work, tourism and construction — sectors that absorb workers readily and recognise qualifications rarely.

Estonia's position rests on a different history: a large Russian-speaking population whose qualifications were obtained under a different system and whose access to professional employment is affected by language requirements.

Where it is lowest

Hungary records 19.9%, Lithuania 23.7% and the Netherlands 25.4%. Sweden records 29.9%.

Hungary and Lithuania are the same Member States that showed small or reversed gaps on poverty, and for the same reason: small non-EU populations recruited into specific jobs, often with qualifications assessed before arrival. Selection at the point of entry produces a better match than integration after it.

The Netherlands at 25.4% is the more interesting case, because it has one of the widest poverty gaps in the Union and one of its narrowest over-qualification gaps. Dutch non-EU residents who are employed and hold degrees are comparatively well matched to their work; the population as a whole is comparatively badly off. Those are compatible, and they point to a divide within the migrant population rather than a uniform position.

What this measures

Over-qualification is recorded by comparing a person's education level with the classification of their occupation. It does not assess whether an individual's specific qualification is recognised, whether they speak the working language, or whether they would prefer a different job.

It is therefore a measure of allocation rather than of ability or preference, and it detects one thing well: an economy in which people arrive with credentials that its labour market does not use.