Europe's Youth Drain in Numbers
The talent trap
The European Commission identified regions stuck in a "talent development trap" across the EU, concentrated in Southern and Eastern Europe. Nearly all of Bulgaria and Romania qualify. So do Sicily, the Alentejo region of Portugal, and large parts of Greece, Croatia, and eastern Germany. These regions lose educated young people faster than they can replace them, and the departure of talent accelerates the economic decline that caused the departure in the first place.
Spain: exporting engineers, importing waiters
Between 2019 and 2024, 71.4% of all new jobs created in Spain went to foreign workers, according to the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea). In the same period, 634,000 jobs were lost for workers aged 30 to 44. In the first half of 2022, 220,443 people emigrated, the highest number since the 2013 financial crisis.
The jobs being created are in construction, hospitality, and elementary occupations. The people leaving are doctors, engineers, and researchers. As Jesús Vega, former HR director at Inditex and Banco Santander, put it: "We are importing waiters and bricklayers while exporting doctors and engineers."
Italy: nine out, one in
For every young foreigner who settles in Italy, nearly nine young Italians leave. Over a million Italians emigrated in the past decade, a third of them aged 25 to 34. The Italian North East Foundation estimates this brain drain cost the country 134 billion euros between 2011 and 2023.
Fewer than 20% of Italians aged 25-64 hold degrees, according to European Data Journalism Network analysis. The graduates Italy does produce increasingly take those degrees to Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands.
Romania and Croatia: a quarter of the country, gone
Roughly 24% of Romanians lived abroad in 2024, up from 14.7% in 2010. Balkan Investigative Reporting Network data shows roughly a fifth of working-age Romanians and about one in seven working-age Croatians resided abroad.
The driver is straightforward: average monthly net earnings in Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia are a fraction of those in Germany, Belgium, or the Netherlands. Free movement within the EU makes the decision frictionless. A Romanian nurse can triple their salary by moving to Austria with no visa, no work permit, and a three-hour flight home.
Bulgaria and Portugal: smaller countries, bigger impact
Bulgaria has lost a significant share of its population to emigration. Portugal has hundreds of thousands of working-age citizens living abroad. For small countries, these are existential numbers. Portugal spent decades investing in education reform, only to watch graduates leave for Northern Europe where their skills command double the salary.
The structural problem
The EU's freedom of movement is one of its greatest achievements. It is also an accelerant for regional inequality. Young people in Southern and Eastern Europe face lower wages, fewer career opportunities, underfunded healthcare, and, in many cases, corrupt or inefficient governance. Northern and Western Europe offer all the things their home countries don't, and there is no border to cross.
EU cohesion funds attempt to address this, but they cannot compete with a German salary. Romania's experiment with IT worker tax breaks showed some success in retaining tech talent, but those incentives were removed in January 2025. Until source countries can close the wage and opportunity gap, the drain will continue.
tl;dr
Dozens of EU regions are in a talent trap. Spain sends 71% of new jobs to foreign workers while its young professionals leave. Italy loses nine graduates for every one it attracts. A quarter of Romania lives abroad. The EU's free movement makes emigration frictionless, and no amount of cohesion funding has closed the gap.