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The Most in-Demand Language to Find a Job – Excluding English
Are you currently asking yourself the question of "Which European language should I learn?"?
The most in-demand language right now may or may not surprise you. Predictably, English has sat at the top of the list for a long time with over 90% of the offers on Europe Language Jobs requiring English, and this percentage shows no signs of dropping. Just look at the high percentage of English speakers in countries in Europe!
But simply speaking English is no longer enough to compete in the modern-day job market. Everyone speaks English nowadays and although the demand is as high as ever, the supply is even higher. So if we take English out of the equation, what are the most useful languages in Europe?
If we assume that our numbers roughly mirror the trends in the European multilingual job market, then we can see that, behind English, there has been one language in particular demand over the last few years. What would your guess be?
Any guesses?
If you said Spanish, like many people, would expect, then - sorry! Spanish sits quite low on our list. However, we estimate that this is partly due to the fact that Spanish speakers can be found on other big job boards such as InfoJobs. At Europe Language Jobs, despite being based in Barcelona, Spanish is the fifth most demanded language on our database. Even though it is definitely one of the most useful European languages worldwide, it is not the most in-demand one.
French, maybe? You´re getting closer - at least geographically. Around 20% of our job offers require French, making it the second (or third including English) most useful language in Europe.
There is also a noticeably high number of Dutch-speaking job offers, the next behind French on our database, and the Nordic languages are on the rise as well. Nordic countries have relatively small populations, alongside relatively large industries, therefore speakers are notoriously hard to find outside of their native countries. Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian speaking job opportunities make up about 21% of our offers.
This does not mean that 21% of our active job offers are in the Nordic countries because, in reality, not many of them are. In fact, our top 10 list of countries with active offers doesn't include any of these three nations. This means that, if you are Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian, and you want to use your native language to broaden your possibilities of finding that dream job, you will have to seriously consider relocating.
The most in-demand language is...
Enough facts and figures! The smart ones amongst you may have already deduced by the process of elimination which language is the best European language to learn right now. For those who haven't, here is the moment we've all been waiting for...
Apart from English, the most useful language in Europe is, of course... German! With the German industry and companies dominating the European economy, the requirements for people who speak the language are consistently in demand. 30% of our active offers require German.
However, as with the Nordic languages, these figures don't mean that most of our offers are in Germany. In fact, Germany is tenth on our list of a number of job offers per country. Spain shoots to the top as it has a lot of startups and large multinationals base themselves here in order to have lower costs in terms of opening operations centres and paying salaries. As well as the fact that people are willing and looking to relocate to southern Europe – must be the weather! This too explains the high numbers of jobs in Greece, Portugal, and Malta.
Planning on increasing your employability? Now that you know that German is the best European language to learn, it looks like picking up some classes would be a good start!
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