Sectoral structure of employment in EU member states with an emphasis on the quaternary sector or on the GDP, 2011-2023

Abstract

Economic activities in the countries of the European Union are broken down in accordance with the NACE classification. The individual sections can be grouped into sectors. Historically, three sectors have been distinguished: primary (agriculture and mineral extraction), secondary (manufacturing and processing) and tertiary (services). As the services sector has become increasingly important over time, the nature of the services provided has changed. And entirely new services have been created: there is a need to complement the traditional three-sector model with a new sector - the quaternary sector. The quaternary sector includes services that are knowledge intensive in nature. The first part of this paper examines the structure of employment in terms of the breakdown into the four sectors mentioned above in the countries of the European Union over the period 2011–2023. It first examines developments over this period and then analyses the situation in 2023 in detail. The second part of the paper divides the countries of the Union into two groups according to the level of GDP per capita. It examines the differences between the sectoral structure of employment in the two groups of countries. The third part then examines the contribution of each sector to the country's GDP.