Eurostat data published to mark the occasion reveals that in 2022, radio broadcasting enterprises employed 30 000 persons in the EU and recorded a net turnover of €4 billion. Data for 2021 shows 5 000 enterprises operating as radio broadcasters across the EU.
In 2022, the top 5 countries by the number of radio broadcasting enterprises were Spain (714), Italy (679), Greece (599), France (343) and Portugal (299). At the other end of the range were Luxembourg (5), Estonia (9), Slovakia (14), Malta (19) and Lithuania (20).
Latvia recorded a very respectable 40 radio broadcasting enterprises with a combined turnover of 10.50 million euros (up from 9.53 million in 2021).
Taking into account the population size of EU members, the ratio of radio broadcasting enterprises per million inhabitants varied significantly across countries. Slovenia recorded the highest ratio at 75 radio broadcasting enterprises per million inhabitants, followed by Greece (57), Malta (36), Cyprus and Croatia (35). Conversely, the lowest ratios were observed in Poland (2), Germany and Slovakia (both 3), Czechia (4), and Austria, France and Sweden (all 5).
The top 5 countries by the number of persons employed in the radio broadcasting sector in 2022 were recorded in Spain (5 550), Germany (5 010), France (2 815), Romania (2 510) and Italy (2 469), while the lowest numbers were observed in Slovakia (53), Lithuania (87), Czechia (100), Estonia (110) and Sweden (163). Latvia has only a few more radio broadcasting employees – 190, down from 230 in 2021.
The percentage of persons employed in the radio broadcasting sector relative to total employment is low across all EU members, ranging from 0.05% in Croatia and 0.04% in Slovenia, Cyprus and Greece, to almost zero in Czechia and Slovakia (both 0.002%) and Sweden (0.003%).
So have an enjoyable World Radio Day, and special congratulations to our colleagues at Latvijas Radio, which you can listen to online here.
