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Between 2023 and 2024, employment in the sports sector rose by 6.5%, reaching 1.6 million staff final 12 months.
This is the third 12 months in a row the place employment in sport has seen progress, a constructive pattern attributed to restoration from the COVID-19 disaster, based on Eurostat.
Sweden leads the means, with 1.50% of its workforce being employed in the sports trade, adopted by Denmark with 1.37% and Spain with 1.17%.
By distinction, Romania (0.21%), Bulgaria (0.44%), and Czechia (0.47%) have the lowest share of people working in this sector.
Compared with the age construction of the whole employed inhabitants, there’s a increased proportion of youth employed in sport than the EU common for all different sectors.
Last 12 months, greater than one-third (36.8%) of all staff had been aged between 15 and 29 years outdated.
In seven EU nations, no less than 40% of people employed in sport had been younger people: Denmark (52.7%), Finland (49.7%), Sweden (49.2%), the Netherlands (46.3%), Belgium (43.5%), Spain (43.5%) and Ireland (43.2%).
In Bulgaria and Spain, that determine was no less than 3 times increased than in different sectors of employment.
Women in the sports sector
The sports trade has lengthy been considered one of the areas the place gender inequality is most seen.
Only at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games was gender parity achieved amongst athletes, with an equal variety of women and men competing for the first time.
Yet the gender hole in sport employment in the EU has widened since 2011.
In 2024, greater than 800,000 males had been working in sport, in comparison with simply over 700,000 ladies.
In most EU nations, males outnumbered ladies in sport-related jobs, with the largest gender gaps in employment being noticed in Cyprus (the place 69.4% of staff had been males) and Belgium (66.8%).
However, in three EU nations, there have been extra ladies than males employed in sport (Latvia with 53.3%, Sweden with 51.4%, and the Netherlands with 50.8%).
The gender disparity can also be evident in management roles.
In 2024, ladies held fewer than a quarter of top decision-making roles in nationwide sports federations throughout the EU’s ten most standard sports, starting from just below 8% in Slovenia to 51% in Sweden.
Only 13% of those federations had a feminine President and 21% had a feminine Vice-President.