Collecting demographic data for the EU aquaculture sector: What can we learn?

Abstract

The EU aquaculture industry is a politically prioritized industry as shown in the EU's Farm to Fork Strategy. The political objectives include biological, economic and social sustainability of the industry. However, while a lot of attention has been paid to the economic importance and environmental impact from the aquaculture sector, there has been less focus on the social dimension. This paper contributes to the development of the social dimension by providing a baseline of the employment structure in the EU aquaculture sector. This is done by producing the first coherent overview of the employment in the sector presenting demographic information on gender, age, education and nationality. Data are further provided by country, by production technology, and by sector (marine, fresh water, shellfish). The results show that the sector is dominated by employees that are citizens of the same country as they are employed, are male, are between 40 and 64 years old, and have a low to medium level of education.