Ten million job vacancies advertised across Europe between April 2025 and March 2026. And the most sought-after group of workers is not the one written about every day.

According to a labour market analysis by BestBrokers, based on data from Eurostat and the European EURES network, technicians come first - 731,953 vacancies. Then professional support staff in administration (630,033), workers in metalworking and mechanical engineering (596,701), machine and plant operators (522,808) and drivers (519,386).

Not one of the top five is for a programmer or an artificial intelligence engineer.

The paradox Germany illustrates best

Germany is simultaneously losing employees - around 32,000 between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 - and looking for people to fill more than 2.4 million jobs. The Netherlands has as many as 2.83 million advertised vacancies, with the second highest employment rate in Europe (83.3 percent). Together, those two countries are seeking over 5.2 million workers, and both recorded a fall in employment.

So the problem is not that there are no jobs. The problem is that there is nobody to fill them.

The same repeats everywhere. Sweden advertised around 285,000 vacancies while its number of employed grew by only 32,000. Finland sought over 109,000 workers and lost around 11,000 employees. Belgium had over 1.2 million listings and employment growth of just 21,000 people.

Where we stand in that table

The average employment rate in the European Union is 76.3 percent. Eleven countries are above 80 percent, with Malta at the top (83.4) and the Netherlands (83.3), followed by Czechia (82.8).

At the other end of the scale is Turkey with 57.3 percent, and among the countries with lower rates the analysis also lists Macedonia, Italy and Romania.

That is a figure worth letting sit for a minute. A continent looking for 10 million people borders countries where a significant share of the working-age population is not in employment. Both things exist at the same time, a few hundred kilometres apart.

Who is growing, who is emptying out

Between the first quarter of 2025 and the same quarter of 2026, Spain added around 430,000 employees - more than any other European country. Portugal follows with 82,000, Greece with 34,000, Croatia with 16,000 and Cyprus with 12,000. Those five together - around 574,000 new employees.

In the same period Turkey lost 392,000 employees, the largest drop in Europe. Germany around 32,000, Italy 24,000, Slovakia 25,000. In percentage terms the biggest declines are in Hungary (1.34 percent), Turkey (1.32) and then Slovenia, Slovakia and Serbia (1.14 percent).

The fastest growing are Cyprus (2.52 percent) and Malta (2.22 percent) - two small economies heavily dependent on foreign workers, where tourism, hospitality, transport and trade keep creating positions.

It is not only how much they work, but how

And one figure that rarely makes headlines. According to research by Eurofound, around 18.8 percent of jobs in the EU can be classified as vulnerable - a combination of low income, job insecurity and a lack of certain rights.

So nearly one in five jobs in the Union - in the countries taken as the benchmark for orderly employment - comes with low income and insecurity. That is useful to know before signing a contract found through a EURES listing.

And the teachers

In Poland, Bulgaria and Estonia teachers are among the most sought-after professions - over 18,900 open positions in those three countries alone. The reason is twofold: the teaching workforce is ageing, and fewer young people are entering the profession.

In Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Liechtenstein health workers are most in demand. In Spain, Portugal, Malta, Denmark, Slovakia, Hungary and Iceland - service workers. In Finland, ICT experts, with over 20,000 positions.

Assemble the whole picture and you get something that does not sound like 2026: a continent that has spent years talking about automation is looking above all for people who repair, drive, produce, teach and care for other people. Those are precisely the professions hardest to automate. The question that follows is whether the education system is preparing people for the vacancies that actually exist, or for the ones everybody talks about.