The European Commission’s DG Research has just released a report on “Indicators on researcher’s stock, career and mobility”. Looking at the professional development of researchers, these indicators give an overview of numbers of researchers by country, by training phase and by contract type. The indicators also comprise inner and extra-European mobility, mobility between the public and the private sector as well as motivations and job satisfaction.

Main findings with regard to researchers’ mobility in Europe are the following:

• In 2005, in the European Union (based on 21 countries reporting data), among the 487,000 doctoral candidates, 28,000 have the nationality of another EU Member State, accounting for nearly 6%.
• The UK had the highest number of doctoral candidates of EU origin, some 11,500, in 2005. It is followed by France (5,400) and Spain (3,100). All the other countries have less than 2,000 doctoral candidates having the nationality of another Member State.
• In the EU27, 9% of doctoral candidates in life sciences, 8% in engineering and 7% in social sciences are EU nationals who work in another EU country.

Download the report here