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77.6% of young university graduates find jobs that match their qualifications, although with significant differences by field of study

The BBVA Foundation and Ivie Update Their Database on University Graduates’ Entry into the Labor Market: New data tracks the career paths of 2019 graduates between 2020 and 2023

The Spanish labor market has been very dynamic in recent years, with notable improvements in both the quantity and quality of employment. Since 2020, more than 2.5 million jobs have been created and 47% of these positions are highly skilled. Opportunities are greater for young university students, who have seen their unemployment rates drop significantly—from 19.3% in 2020 to 12% in 2024. According to INE’s Labor Force Survey, 77.6% of young university graduates find jobs aligned with their training, meaning that the percentage of underemployment or overqualification among university graduates has fallen to 22.4%. This figure is considerably lower than the 35% of higher education graduates working in roles that do not require high qualifications, a group that includes those with higher vocational training, whose occupational structure tends to be less skilled.

In stark contrast to the challenges faced by university graduates entering the labor market during the Great Recession, recent university graduates are encountering more job opportunities and better alignment between their education and employment. Of the 500,000 new jobs filled by young people aged  22 to 29 since 2020, 44% have been taken by university graduates, 22% by those from advanced-level vocational training programs (CFGS), and 25% by those with high school or intermediate vocational training (CFGM). Among the 223,110 newly  employed young university graduates, 89% are in highly skilled positions, including directors and managers, scientific and intellectual professionals and technical support staff.

However, job opportunities vary greatly depending on the degree studied. With over 4,700 degree programs available, employment outcomes differ widely. To provide a detailed breakdown of the employment by field of study, U-Ranking uses data provided by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, based on Social Security information, which tracks the career paths of 2019 graduates over their first four years in the workforce. The best results are found in health sciences and engineering, some of which show full employment and minimal underemployment. In contrast, certain fields within social sciences and arts and humanities show weaker labor market integration, with  marked weaknesses in terms of unemployment, low wages and, above all, significant mismatches between job roles and educational qualifications.

To objectively assess the evolution of labor market integration, the BBVA Foundation and Ivie have updated their periodic evaluation, in a joint project led by researchers Francisco Pérez and Joaquín Aldás from the University of Valencia and Ivie, in collaboration with Ivie technicians, Irene Zaera and Rodrigo Aragón. The 2025 edition of U-Ranking analyzes employment outcomes for 108 fields of study offered by Spanish universities, combining indicators such as Social Security affiliation, alignment between jobs and education, and salary level. After analyzing the career trajectories of 2019 university graduates from 2020 to 2023, the U-Ranking website shows the job placement ranking by field of study. Among the top 10 degree programs for job placement, four are in health (medicine, nursing, and dentistry lead the ranking, along with pharmacy) and six are in engineering (industrial organization, software and application development, electronic, electrical, telecommunications and energy engineering).

Regarding the type of ownership, private universities account for 20% of graduates in the four health-related degree programs with the highest employability, but only 8% of graduates are in the top engineering programs. In the case of the 10 fields with the weakest job placement results, private universities represent 12% of the student body.

Boosting graduate job placement since 2020

The improvement in job placement is largely due to intense job creation and an increase in the proportion of highly skilled positions. This has led to a reduction in the average overqualification and underemployment among young university graduates, i.e., the percentage of graduates working in jobs that do not require their level of education. This percentage has fallen from 30% during the Great Recession to 22.4% in 2024.

The recovery of university employment in Spain has been evident for over a decade, but after a brief pause in 2020, it gained momentum in the years following the pandemic. The labor market has shown positive signs for young people with post-compulsory education over the last five years, creating 500,000 jobs for individuals aged between 22 and 29. Of these, 44% have been filled by university graduates, a percentage higher than the share of university graduates in the total employment in Spain (33%). The result has been a 30% increase in university employment since 2020 (at an annual rate of 6.7%). Added to this positive trend is a change in the quality of employment: the growth rate of university graduates employed in highly skilled positions has been 7.9%, resulting in a cumulative increase of 35.5% in just four years.

The improvement in the employability of university graduates stems from a remarkable transformation in Spain’s productive fabric, which increasingly demands highly qualified human capital that can be utilized in knowledge-intensive occupations. For this reason, the underemployment rates, i.e., the percentage of university graduates hired in medium- or low-skilled occupations, have been falling. The underemployment rate among young people aged 22 to 29 with university degrees has dropped from 30% at the end of the Great Recession to 22.4% in 2024. While this percentage remains higher than in other advanced countries, progress is significant.

When discussing underemployment or overqualification among graduates with higher education qualifications, it is important to bear in mind that this group includes both university graduates and those who have completed advanced vocational training (CFGS). While the average number of overqualified young people in Spain across both educational levels is 35%, for university graduates it is 12.6 percentage points lower. In contrast, employment among CFGS graduates is not concentrated in highly qualified groups, as intermediate-level occupations represent 72% of the total.

Dimensions of labor market integration and differences by field of study

When it comes to university graduates entering the job market, there are significant differences between different branches and fields of study, especially in the early years of employment. U-Ranking analyzes these differences using information provided by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. Based on this data, it constructs a ranking that takes into account the probability of finding employment, measured by the rate of affiliation of university graduates four years after graduation, together with the quality of integration. This is reflected in income (approximated by the average social security contribution bases) and the alignment between employment and the level of studies completed (measured by the percentage of graduates hired in a contribution group appropriate to the level of higher education).

The analysis by field of study provided by the ranking confirms the superior results of technical and health degrees across the main indicators of labor market integration. In the first employment indicator, 88% of engineering and architecture degrees (30 out of 34) and 77% of health science degrees (10 out of 13) have an above-average employment rate, reflecting significantly more favorable job placement. These figures contrast with the situation in arts and humanities, where no field of study exceeds the average employment rate for recent graduates (78%). In sciences, 5 of the 13 fields of study are above average, while in social and legal sciences, nearly half (14 out of 31) exceed the average.

As for the second indicator, choosing a career in health or engineering significantly increases the likelihood of a good match between employment and training. In health sciences, 92% of fields (12 out of 13) achieve a match above the average of 61%; the percentage reaches 85% in technical fields of study (29 out of 34). Meanwhile, 8 of the 13 scientific fields exceed the average for this indicator. In contrast, the match is clearly insufficient in social and legal sciences and in arts and humanities, where only 2 of the 17 fields achieve a match percentage above 61%.

Finally, in terms of income, engineering shows the greatest differences compared to other fields of study. Eighty-two percent of the fields of study in this branch (28 out of 34) achieve an average contribution base above the average of €31,000. In health sciences, the income advantages are not as significant as in the other two integration indicators, but almost a third of the fields (4 out of 13) exceed the average. In the remaining fields of study, the majority have below-average incomes, with fewer than 20% exceeding the average: 6 out of 31 in social and legal sciences, 2 out of 13 in sciences, and just 1 out of 17 in arts and humanities.

In short, graduates in health sciences and engineering enjoy better employment prospects in terms of quantity and, above all, quality, which is why they occupy the top positions in the global ranking. The opposite is true for graduates in social sciences and arts and humanities, who perform worse. Science graduates occupy an intermediate position.

Medicine, nursing, and dentistry lead the employment ranking, followed by six engineering fields (industrial organization, software and application development, electronic engineering, electrical engineering, telecommunications engineering, and energy engineering) and pharmacy, another health-related degree. At the opposite end of the spectrum are fields such as cultural studies and management, tourism, and criminology, with poor employment rates.

Graduates from the same field of study at public and private universities do not differ significantly in their employment outcomes. The positioning of private universities in the fields with the best employment rates does not show any general advantages or disadvantages compared to public universities, as result depends on the field of study. For example, compared to a weighting of 16% in the total number of graduates, the percentage of graduates from private universities rises to 20% in the four health fields ranked in the top ten for employability. Dentistry is particularly noteworthy, with 61% of graduates coming from private institutions. Conversely, in the six engineering fields with the best job placement rates, the percentage of graduates from private universities drops to 8%.

The updated employment ranking data shows a number of new degrees in the system in prominent positions, most of which are linked to the use of big data in management, the use of technology in creative and design activities, and emerging engineering degrees focused on sustainability, security, and cybersecurity. Examples include software and application development (ranked 5th), energy engineering (10th), environmental engineering (18th), other computer science degrees such as data science (27th), multimedia engineering (43rd), and video game development (44th). These new degrees that are well positioned confirm the response of universities to labor market demands.

Science degrees offer medium-to-high levels of employability, with mathematics (21), physics (32), statistics (38), biochemistry (46), biotechnology (48), and chemistry (50) all ranking in the top half of the table. In contrast, humanities and social and legal sciences suffer from the lowest levels of employability, occupying positions in the bottom quantities of the ranking. A fact that adds to the seriousness of the problem is that among the 10 degrees with the weakest outcomes are some with a high volume of graduates, such as advertising and public relations, tourism, criminology, and fine arts. In 35 fields within the humanities and social and legal sciences, the percentage of graduates who obtain jobs that match their level of studies does not exceed 50%, and in some extreme cases, the percentages drop below 20%.

When considering the income of recent graduates based on average Social Security contribution bases, engineering degrees appear in the top positions, with the exception of medicine, which also leads this ranking with an average of €41,839. Among the top 10 are three degrees in computer-related engineering: computer engineering (€39,207), software and application development (€37,937), and computer science (€36,732). They are joined by others related to logistics or transport, although with a small number of graduates (air transport services, nautical and maritime transport, and land transport services). Two science degrees, statistics (€35,206) and mathematics (€34,483), are rank among the top 20. The gap between the degree that provides the highest income (medicine) and the one with the lowest contribution bases (conservation and restoration, with an average of €21,980) rises to €20,000. In total, up to 13 fields of study have average contribution bases below €25,000 per year.

Finally, U-Ranking also analyzes whether Social Security contribution groups reflect the suitability of jobs for the level of education. Health degrees show very high levels of alignment, likely due to strict training requirements and high regulations. Medicine (99.8%), nursing (97.7%), dentistry (97.1%), optics and optometry (92.8%), and pharmacy (88.9%) occupy the top five positions. Unlike the two previous indicators, which were dominated by health or engineering degrees, two science degrees appear in the top 20: physics (83.2%) and biochemistry (78.7%). In contrast, many social sciences and arts and humanities degrees are at the bottom of the list, the percentages of employees’ contribution groups matching their university education are in the minority and in some cases do not reach 20%: criminology (18%), hotel management (18.8%) and cultural studies and management (19.1%). The gap between the top and bottom fields in this indicator exceeds 81 percentage points. In 35 fields within these two branches, fewer than half of the jobs obtained by graduates match their level of education.

The database on university graduates’ employability, published by the BBVA Foundation and the Ivie, was made available on their U-Ranking website on 8 May 2025. It serves as a valuable tool for students to decide which degree to pursue. Employability is one of the key variables that help make the final decision, and the U-Ranking website allows users to view and compare job placement data across degrees. The tool shows the full list of degrees, or users can select a degree and customize their search by degree, autonomous community, university ownership, graduate gender, and time since graduation. All data is sourced from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, based on Social Security records from 2020 to 2023 for university students who graduated in the 2018-2019 academic year.