There are 105 higher education courses with an unemployment rate above the national average

Recent graduates in Animation and Artistic Production, from the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, have an unemployment rate of 17.1%, well above the 6.4% national average.

The number of higher education courses with an unemployment rate among recent graduates higher than the national average increased again in the 2024/2025 academic year.

The most recent data from the portal, released by the Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation (MECI), reveals that 105 courses present a unemployment rate above 6.4%a value corresponding to the national unemployment rate recorded in 2024. In the opposite direction, there are 85 courses where unemployment was not recorded among recent graduates.

Among the courses with the worst indicators, training taught in public polytechnic institutes predominates. THE degree in Animation and Artistic Productionfrom the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, tops the list with an unemployment rate of 17.1%. Follow Digital Arts and Multimediafrom the Escola Superior de Artes e Design do Porto, with 13.4%, and Social Education, from the Escola Superior de Educação de Fafe, with 12%. THE Polytechnic Institute of Bragança appears again among the courses with the highest unemployment in degrees in Social Education and Marketing, both with a rate of 10.3%, says the .

The list also includes training in the areas of Design, Architecture, Fashion Marketing and Documentation and Information Sciences and Technologies.

At the opposite extreme are courses traditionally associated with high employability. Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nursing, Physiotherapy, Osteopathy, Basic Education and Marine Electrical Engineering register zero or close to zero unemployment rates among recent graduates.

The indicator published by Infocursos corresponds to the percentage of graduates registered as unemployed at the Institute of Employment and Professional Training (IEFP), being calculated based on the average of records from June and December 2024.

Despite the existence of courses with high levels of unemployment, the data shows an overall trend of improvement. The percentage of recent graduates enrolled in the IEFP has decreased significantly in the last decaderising from 7.2% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2026, considering only integrated bachelor’s and master’s degrees.