Percentage of researchers by region in Europe

by Jakub Marian

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Being a researcher is probably one of the least mundane jobs in the world, but not everyone can become one, and most people choose a different career path anywayso why should you care?

Researchers form an important pillar of society, creating long-term value upon which entrepreneurs as well as the public sector can build. The following map, based on Eurostat data, shows the percentage of employees that work as researchers by NUTS 2 region. Eurostat defines the metric as follows:

“Researchers are professionals engaged in the conception or creation of new knowledge, products, processes, methods and systems and also in the management of the projects concerned. The measure shown in this table [in the map] is researchers in full time equivalents divided by the total annual average employed population.”
researchers NUTS 2
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Of course, quantity does not equal quality, which is much harder to judge objectively, so higher numbers are not necessarily betterbut usually they are. Keeping that in mind, take a look at the list of regions where more than 2% of people work in research:

Inner London – West, UK5.2
Capital Region of Denmark2.8
Walloon Brabant, Belgium2.8
Bratislava Region, Slovakia2.4
Helsinki-Uusimaa, Finland2.2
Trøndelag, Norway2.2
Prague, Czech Republic2.1
Braunschweig, Germany2.1
Île de France2.0

In London, most researchers are concentrated in one small (but populous) part (which is barely visible on the map), while all other parts of London have less than 0.6% of researchers. On average, London boasts 1.0% of people employed in research.

The data for the two missing regions of Germany are not present in the Eurostat database, and the entries are marked as “confidential”, whatever that means. Perhaps everybody in Niederbayern and Oberpfalz secretly works on a death ray?

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