Contents
- Digital skills among adults statistics: EU attainment and progress toward the 2030 target
- Digital skills among adults statistics: age-group differences in measured digital skill levels
- Digital skills among adults statistics: gender patterns by age
- Digital skills among adults statistics: education attainment and labour-market status
- Digital skills among adults statistics: country comparisons
- Digital skills among adults: European targets and measurement context
- Sources
Digital skills among adults statistics: EU attainment and progress toward the 2030 target
In 2025, 60% of people aged 16–74 in the European Union had at least basic digital skills. The measure combines people classified as having basic or above-basic overall digital skills. In the overall 2025 breakdown, 31% had basic overall skills and 29% had above-basic overall skills. These are different levels within the same indicator, not separate populations. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
The EU-wide at-least-basic share was 54% in 2021, 56% in 2023 and 60% in 2025. The sequence shows gradual progress across those reported years. The 2025 result remained 20 percentage points below the EU’s 2030 target, which calls for at least 80% of adults to have at least basic digital skills. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
| EU people aged 16–74 | At least basic digital skills |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 54% |
| 2023 | 56% |
| 2025 | 60% |
| 2030 target | At least 80% |
Source: Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe. The target is a future benchmark, not a measured 2030 outcome.
Digital skills among adults statistics: age-group differences in measured digital skill levels
Age differences are pronounced in the 2025 figures. Among EU residents aged 65–74, 33% had at least basic digital skills. Eurostat describes the share for each of the younger groups aged 16–24 and 25–34 as around 75%. Those two estimates are approximate values as printed in the report. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age)
| EU age group, 2025 | At least basic digital skills |
|---|---|
| 16–24 | Around 75% |
| 25–34 | Around 75% |
| 65–74 | 33% |
Source: Eurostat, Skills for the digital age.
The figures describe different age bands, not a continuous scale for every year of age. They also measure the proportion reaching at least the basic threshold; they do not indicate the average skill level within each group. The full indicator covers ages 16–74, while these age-specific observations help show how the EU-wide result can conceal variation among adults. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat metadata, Individuals’ level of digital skills)
Digital skills among adults statistics: gender patterns by age
Across all EU people aged 16–74 in 2025, 62% of men and 59% of women had at least basic digital skills. The overall figures do not describe every age group equally: among younger adults, the reported rates were slightly higher for women. For ages 16–24, Eurostat’s report gives 76% for women and 73% for men; the accompanying news release provides more precise values of 75.9% and 73.3%, respectively. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe; Eurostat, “75% of young Europeans have at least basic digital skills”)
For ages 25–34, 75% of women and 74% of men had at least basic skills. For ages 65–74, the pattern went the other way: 38% of men and 29% of women met the threshold. The rates are reported by sex within each specified age group. (Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
| EU age group, 2025 | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| 16–24 | 76% | 73% |
| 25–34 | 75% | 74% |
| 65–74 | 29% | 38% |
Source: Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe. The 16–24 values in this table are rounded report figures; the news release separately reports 75.9% for women and 73.3% for men.
The report states that women’s at-least-basic share among 16–24-year-olds was 3 percentage points higher than men’s. For ages 55–64, men’s share was 4 percentage points higher than women’s. These are age-specific gaps, and they should not be substituted for the overall 16–74 comparison. (Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
A separate measure concerns above-basic skills among women younger than 34. In that group, more than half of women who had at least basic skills also had above-basic skills; the highest age-group share was 45% in the youngest age group. This is a conditional share among women who already met the at-least-basic threshold, not a percentage of all women in that age band. (Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
Digital skills among adults statistics: education attainment and labour-market status
In 2025, the share with at least basic digital skills ranged from 38% among EU residents aged 16–74 with no or low formal education to 82% among those with high formal education. These are education-group rates for the same broad age range. Eurostat also reports that among people with higher education, 30% had basic overall skills and 50% had above-basic overall skills. Together, those levels describe the reported 2025 breakdown for that education group. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
National differences in the education gap were also substantial. In 2025, the gap between the high-education and no/low-education groups was 67 percentage points in Croatia, 63 in Portugal and 62 in Malta. The smallest reported gaps were 12 percentage points in Ireland, 18 in Estonia and 19 in Denmark. Each gap compares the at-least-basic rates for the two specified education groups in that country. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age)
Labour-market status shows another set of differences. In the EU in 2025, 80% of students had at least basic overall digital skills, as did 69% of employees, self-employed people and family workers. The reported shares were 54% among unemployed people and 37% among retired or otherwise inactive people, excluding students. These categories describe distinct status groups in the indicator population; the rates do not establish why their results differ. (Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
Digital skills among adults statistics: country comparisons
Country results in 2025 ranged from 32% in Romania and 38% in Bulgaria to 84% in the Netherlands. Ireland recorded 83%, while Denmark and Finland each recorded 81% of residents aged 16–74 with at least basic digital skills. The measure is the same broad threshold used for the EU-level figures above. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age)
| Country, 2025 | People aged 16–74 with at least basic digital skills |
|---|---|
| Netherlands | 84% |
| Ireland | 83% |
| Denmark | 81% |
| Finland | 81% |
| Bulgaria | 38% |
| Romania | 32% |
Source: Eurostat, Skills for the digital age.
Four EU countries had already surpassed the 80% target in 2025: the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark and Finland. This country comparison places the EU-wide figure of 60% alongside national results, but it does not explain the reasons for those differences. (Eurostat, Skills for the digital age)
Gender comparisons also vary among countries. Germany had the largest reported difference, at 6 percentage points, followed by Croatia at 5 percentage points. In 8 EU countries, women’s at-least-basic share was higher than men’s. The country-level pattern therefore does not mirror a single uniform gender relationship across the EU. (Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
Digital skills among adults: European targets and measurement context
Eurostat’s indicator uses the percentage of the total number of individuals aged 16–74 as its unit. This makes the age denominator explicit: “adults” in these EU-wide comparisons refers to that measured population, rather than all people of every age. The Digital Decade target is also expressed for adults, with the indicator representing them through ages 16–74. (Eurostat metadata, Individuals’ level of digital skills; Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe)
The digital skills indicator is an activity-based proxy for skills. It summarizes whether people performed certain digital activities; it is not a direct examination of every individual’s competence. Eurostat notes a substantial methodology change at the start of the 2021 series. Comparisons across that break require care, so the 2021, 2023 and 2025 figures cited here are drawn from the series presented for those years. (Eurostat metadata, Individuals’ level of digital skills)
The 2025 youth figures offer a more precise view of one age band: 74.6% of EU residents aged 16–24 had at least basic skills, including 75.9% of women and 73.3% of men. At country level, the higher share for young women was observed in 22 EU countries. These youth statistics complement the 16–74 indicator, but their narrower age denominator means they should be read as a separate subgroup measure. (Eurostat, “75% of young Europeans have at least basic digital skills”)