Which are the characteristics of Europe’s highly qualified human resources?

More than 52 million people were working as professionals and technicians in the EU 25 in 2004. This is close to 30 % of the total population employed between 25 and 64 years. In the EU-25 mainly men work as scientists and engineers. They were over 2.5 times more than women. Eighty per cent of the science and technology occupations are in the services sectors, broadly distributed between knowledge intensive and less knowledge intensive services. Ireland and Finland show the highest annual average growth rates for these professions.