R & D personnel

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Data from November 2011, most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.

This article analyses data on research and development (R & D) personnel, researchers and human resources in science and technology in the European Union (EU). Statistics on human resources in science and technology are a key indicator for measuring the knowledge-based economy and its developments. These statistics can show the supply of, and demand for highly qualified science and technology specialists.

Table 1: Researchers, by institutional sector, 2010 (1) - Source: Eurostat (tsc00004)
File:Proportion of research and development personnel by sector, 2010 (1) (% of labour force).png
Figure 1: Proportion of research and development personnel by sector, 2010 (1)
(% of labour force) - Source: Eurostat (tsc00002)
Figure 2: Gender breakdown of researchers in all institutional sectors, 2009 (1)
(% of total researchers, based on FTEs) - Source: Eurostat (tsc00006)
Table 2: Human resources in science and technology, 2007-2010 - Source: Eurostat (hrst_st_nocc)
Table 3: Science and technology graduates, 2004 and 2009
(tertiary graduates in science and technology per 1 000 persons aged 20-29 years) - Source: Eurostat (tsiir050)
Table 4: PhD students (ISCED level 6), 2009 - Source: Eurostat (educ_enrl5)

Contents

Main statistical findings

R & D personnel

The number of researchers in the EU-27 has increased in recent years. There were 1.56 million researchers (full-time equivalents (FTE)) employed in the EU-27 in 2010 (see Table 1), which marked an increase of almost 446 000 (or 40 %) when compared with 2000.

A breakdown of R & D personnel in the EU-27 by institutional sector in 2010 shows that there was a high concentration in the business enterprise sector (45 %) and the higher education sector (41 %), while 13 % of the R & D personnel was working in the government sector. The relative importance of the different institutional sectors varied considerably across the Member States, with business enterprises accounting for more than three fifths of all researchers in Austria, Sweden and Denmark. Bulgaria reported that more than half (53 %) of its researchers were employed within the government sector, far more than the next highest share recorded in Romania (28 %). More than two thirds of all researchers working in Latvia, Slovakia and Lithuania were employed within the higher education sector.

R & D personnel from all sectors together made up more than 2 % of the labour force in Luxembourg and Finland in 2010. Aside from these two Member States, this share ranged from less than 0.5 % in Romania, Cyprus, Poland, Latvia, and Bulgaria to over 1.5 % in Sweden and Denmark with the EU-27 average estimated 1.04 %. A gender breakdown shows that men accounted for 70 % of the EU-27’s workforce of researchers in 2009, 3 percentage points lower than in 2000. The share of women in the total number of researchers in 2009 was close to half in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria, as well as in Croatia.

Human resources in science and technology

Human resources in science and technology (HRST) provide a broad measure of the supply of, and demand for, people highly qualified in science and technology. Some 66.8 million people were employed in the EU-27 within science and technology occupations in 2010; this amounted to 31.0 % of total employment. Between 2007 and 2010 there was an increase in the relative importance of HRST within the EU-27 workforce, as their share rose by 1.1 percentage points. The HRST ‘core’ – which is made up of people within science and technology occupations who possess a tertiary level education (for example, university graduates) – amounted to 40.7 million persons in 2010 (or 18.9 % of the total number of persons employed).

Persons in HRST occupations accounted for around two fifths of the workforce in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands in 2010 and just over half in Luxembourg. The lowest shares were recorded in Portugal and Romania where persons in HRST occupations accounted for slightly less than one fifth of total employment. Concerning core HRST, in other words persons simultaneously in HRST occupations and having completed a tertiary level of education, the range between countries was similar: in Romania some 12.6 % of total employment was core HRST in 2010, while at the other end of the scale the share rose to 32.9 % in Luxembourg (see Table 2).

Within the EU-27 there were 14.3 graduates in mathematics, science and technology fields of education per 1 000 persons aged 20 to 29 years in 2009, with particularly high ratios in France, Romania, Finland and Lithuania (see Table 3). This ratio should be interpreted with care as some graduates may be foreigners who return home following their studies and so push up the ratio in the country where they studied and pull down the ratio in their country of origin; this may explain to a large extent the very low ratios recorded in two of the smallest Member States, Cyprus and Malta.

A similar but more specific measure of a country’s potential research capability is provided by the number of doctoral students (see Table 4). There were 525 800 doctoral students in the EU-27 in 2007, compared with levels of 457 400 in the United States and 74 400 in Japan (these latter two figures are for 2009). In relative terms, the broad subject group of science, mathematics, computing, engineering, manufacturing and construction-related studies accounted for more than one third (36.4 %) of the doctoral students in the EU-27 in 2007, a proportion that was somewhat higher than in Japan (31.6 %, again for 2009) but lower than in the United States (38.1 %, also for 2009).

Women accounted for 47.8 % of doctoral students in the EU-27 in 2007, a share that was not too dissimilar from that recorded in the United States, where women were on a par with men (50.0 % in 2009); in contrast, men accounted for a much higher share of doctoral students in Japan (68.8 % in 2009). The gender split of doctoral students across the Member States was typically quite balanced in 2009: women accounted for more than half of all the doctoral students in the Baltic Member States, Portugal, Finland, Italy, Spain, Poland, Bulgaria and Slovenia, and at least 40 % of all doctoral students in the remaining Member States for which data are available, with the exception of Malta.

Data sources and availability

Statistics on science, technology and innovation (STI statistics) are based on Decision 1608/2003/EC concerning the production and development of Community statistics on science and technology. In close cooperation with the Member States, this Decision was implemented by Eurostat in the form of legislative measures and other work.
Regulation 753/2004 was adopted in 2004 implementing Decision 1608/2003/EC.

Statistics on R & D personnel are compiled using guidelines laid out in the Frascati manual, published in 2002 by the OECD. R & D personnel include all persons employed directly within R & D, as well as persons supplying direct services to R & D, such as managers, administrative staff and clerical staff. For statistical purposes, indicators on R & D personnel who are mainly or partly employed on R & D are compiled as head counts (HC) and as full-time equivalents (FTEs). Researchers are a sub-category of R & D personnel and are professionals engaged in the conception or creation of new knowledge, products, processes, methods and systems, and in the management of the projects concerned.

Statistics on HRST are compiled using guidelines laid out in the Canberra manual, prepared in cooperation between the OECD, European Commission, UNESCO and the International Labour Organisation, and published in 1995. HRST are defined on the basis of education and/or occupation. HRST based on education are persons having successfully completed tertiary education in one or more of seven broad fields: natural sciences, engineering and technology, medical sciences, agricultural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and other fields. HRST based on occupation are persons who are employed in science and technology occupations as professionals or technicians. Persons who fulfil both education and occupation criteria are classified as the HRST ‘core’. Tertiary education is defined as levels 5a, 5b or 6 of the 1997 version of the international standard classification of education (ISCED). In 2007 a review of ISCED began and, at the time of writing, it is expected that the revised version will be presented to UNESCO’s General Conference in November 2011. Among other changes, the revised ISCED proposes four levels of tertiary education compared with two categories in the current version.

Science and technology occupations are covered by major groups 2 and 3 of the international standard classification of occupations (ISCO-88).

HRST data can be broken down by gender, age, region, sector of activity, occupation, educational attainment and fields of education (although it should be noted that not all combinations are possible). Data relating to stocks of HRST provide information on the characteristics of the current labour force.

Information on HRST flows from education are obtained from a UNESCO/OECD/Eurostat questionnaire on education and this can be used to provide a measure of the current and future supply of HRST from the education system, in terms of actual inflows (graduates from the reference period) and potential inflows (students participating in higher education during the reference period). Science and technology graduates are defined as the number of new graduates from all public and private institutions completing science and technology-related graduate and post-graduate studies in the reference year; the number of graduates is expressed relative to the total number of persons aged 20-29 years.

Indicators based on the number of doctoral students give an idea of the extent to which countries will have researchers at the highest level of education in the future. The data relate to the number of students in the reference year; they do not refer to the number of new graduates or to the total number (stock) of graduates in the labour market that year. The number of doctoral students is measured as students enrolled in ISCED level 6: this level concerns tertiary programmes which lead to the award of an advanced research degree, for example, a doctorate in economics. These programmes should be devoted to advanced study and original research and are not based on course-work alone; studies at the doctoral level usually require 3 to 5 years.

Context

The European Research Area (ERA) is composed of all research and development activities, programmes and policies in Europe which involve a transnational perspective. In May 2008, the European Commission adopted a Communication to launch an initiative titled, ‘better careers and more mobility: a European partnership for researchers’. The goal of this initiative is to improve the mobility of researchers and to enhance the diffusion of knowledge throughout Europe, by: balancing demand and supply for researchers at a European level; helping create centres of excellence; and improving the skills of researchers in Europe.

In December 2008, the competitiveness Council adopted a 2020 vision for the ERA. According to the opening statement of this vision, all players should benefit from: the ‘fifth freedom’, introducing the free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology across the ERA; attractive conditions for carrying out research and investing in R & D intensive sectors; Europe-wide scientific competition, together with the appropriate level of cooperation and coordination. The 2020 vision for the ERA is part of the wider picture of Europe’s 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.

As part of the EU's 7th framework programme for research and technological development (FP7) the European Commission announced in July 2011 nearly EUR 7 000 million of investment in research and innovation, with the aim of providing an economic stimulus expected to create around 174 000 jobs.

In the FP7 the Marie Curie actions have been regrouped and reinforced within the specific programme titled people. Entirely dedicated to human resources in research, this programme has an overall budget of more than EUR 4 700 million over a seven-year period until 2013. Within this programme, efforts will be made to increase participation by women researchers, by encouraging equal opportunities in all Marie Curie actions, by designing the actions to ensure that researchers can achieve an appropriate work/life balance and by facilitating resuming a research career after a break. A number of groups are actively promoting greater gender equality. Among others these include the European association for women in science, engineering and technology (WiTEC), and the European platform of women scientists (EPWS). Horizon 2020 is planned as the framework programme for research and innovation after 2013 – see the article on science and technology introduced for more information.

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Main tables

Research and development (t_research)
Total researchers, by sectors of performance (tsc00003)
Total researchers (FTE), by sectors of performance (tsc00004)
Research and development personnel, by sectors of performance (tsc00002)
Share of women researchers, by sectors of performance (tsc00005)
Share of women researchers (FTE): all sectors (tsc00006)

Database

Research and development (research)
Statistics on research and development (rd)
R&D personnel at national and regional level (rd_p)
Total R&D personnel by sectors of performance, occupation and sex (rd_p_persocc)
Total R&D personnel and researchers by sectors of performance, as % of total labour force and total employment, and by sex (rd_p_perslf)
Share of female researchers by sectors of performance (rd_p_femres)
Total R&D personnel and researchers by sectors of performance, qualification and sex (rd_p_persqual)
Total R&D personnel and researchers by sectors of performance, sex and fields of science (rd_p_perssci)
Researchers (HC) in government and higher education sector by age and sex (rd_p_persage)
Researchers (HC) in government and higher education sector by citizenship and sex (rd_p_perscitz)
Total R&D personnel and researchers, in business enterprise sector by economic activity and sex (rd_p_bempocc)
Total R&D personnel and researchers (FTE), in business enterprise sector, by size class (number of employees) and sex (rd_p_perssize)
Total R&D personnel and researchers by sectors of performance, region and sex (rd_p_persreg)

Dedicated section

Methodology / Metadata

Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)

External links

See also


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