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Think of a lively 22-year-old who just graduated from high school in Bucharest and is looking for work on websites that are eerily quiet. No calls back, no interviews, just a lot of ads for low-paying jobs that barely pay the rent. It’s not a dystopian novel. It’s the daily life of hundreds of thousands of Romanian young people who are stuck in Europe’s worst unemployment nightmare.
As of mid-2025, Romania has the highest rate of youth unemployment in the EU, with 25.3% of people under 25 out of work—almost twice the bloc’s average of 14.8%.
Berlin’s young professionals are doing well, and Amsterdam’s startups are buzzing, but Romania’s dreamers are being left behind, which is causing a silent exodus that’s draining the country of its resources. The numbers tell a sad story. According to Eurostat, Romania’s youth unemployment rate rose to 23.9% by the end of 2024 and stayed high into 2025, even higher than Sweden’s, which was 24.6% at the time.
But the NEETs, who are not in school, work, or training, tell the real story. Romania’s rate for people aged 15 to 29 is higher than the EU’s 11%. In the South-East region, for example, 29.9% of young people are lost, which is one in three.
Young women do worse, with NEET rates as high as 37.7% in some areas—2.1 points higher than men.
These aren’t just numbers; they’re stolen futures, from coders who work for free on Fiverr to artists who draw dreams that have been put off. Even worse, the crisis is affecting schools, where teens are dropping out of college like it’s the latest trend. Romania has 16.8% of students who drop out of school early, which is almost twice the EU’s 9.4%. 32% of 15- to 19-year-olds are not in any formal learning, compared to 16% in the OECD.
Only 23.2% of young adults have college degrees, which is half of the EU’s 44.1% and the lowest in the union.
In 2024-2025, only 568,600 students were enrolled in a tertiary program, and only 10% of 25-29-year-olds bothered to pursue it. This is much lower than in Poland or Hungary. Blame a broken system that turns out “paper-qualified” graduates who aren’t ready for today’s jobs, curricula that don’t keep up with tech booms, and a post-pandemic burnout where TikTok hustles beat textbooks. One OECD report says that Romania’s education is becoming less and less of a “path out of poverty.”
This disengagement isn’t just happening to one person; it’s a powder keg for Romania’s workforce implosion and brain drain. OECD havens like Germany take away 244,000 people from the country every year (36% of migrants), stealing nurses, engineers, and innovators who could have sped up local growth.
Over half of Romanian young people want to leave the country for more than six months because of low wages (an average of €800 a month compared to €2,000 in the West) and unstable economies.
Romania has the third-highest population loss in the EU due to low birth rates, an aging population, and people leaving the country. This leaves 63% of people of working age without a job, compared to 70% in the OECD.
It’s a vicious cycle: young people who are out of work create unstable families, which empties villages and puts the EU on the hook for Romania’s welfare costs while Germany gets all the talent. This is similar to Greece’s meltdown in the 2010s or Italy’s malaise in the 2000s, but Romania’s size makes it seem more urgent. The EU’s cohesion funds keep coming in, but without changes to vocational training, anti-corruption efforts, and youth centers, the bleeding continues.
Romania isn’t just losing people; it’s losing potential, which could hurt Europe’s eastern flank for a long time. Will Brussels and Bucharest wake up before the lost generation becomes Europe’s biggest mistake?