On 27 September, Eurostat released new data on the employment rates in the sports domain in Europe. The data shows that in 2020, 1.3 million people were employed in the field of sport, accounting for 0.7% of total employment with Sweden, Finland, Spain and the Netherlands at the top of the chart.
It is noteworthy that 33% of those employed in the sports sector are between 15 and 29 years old and women account for 43% of EU employment in the field of sport.
Another extraordinary and remarkable dimension is the growth of the sports sector. The annual growth rate of employment in the sport sector was with 1.6% even higher than the 0.8% annual growth of total employment numbers. The increase of people employed in sport is evident in 21 of the 27 EU Member States, making it a large-scale trend across the EU.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic also becomes apparent in the data. Since 2020, the employment rates have gone down by 4% in comparison to 2019. It remains to be seen if the recovery will be to a similar extent and bringing the employment in the EU sports sector back to pre-Covid-19 levels.