Education at a Glance 2026

Executive Summary

Education at a Glance provides internationally comparable data on education systems across the world, covering attainment, enrolment, finance and the organisation of education systems. The 2026 edition has a special focus on teacher shortages, examining their impact across countries and how education systems can respond.

Teacher shortages are a widespread concern

Labour shortages in high-skilled professions are common across OECD countries and the teaching profession is no exception. In some countries, teacher shortages show up through high numbers of unfilled positions: in Latvia and Luxembourg, around 4% of all teaching positions in secondary education were unfilled at the start of the 2024/25 school year. However, in most other countries with available data, the share of unfilled vacancies is below 3% and often below 1%. More commonly, teacher shortages are reflected in the share of teachers who are not fully qualified, as education systems recruit teachers without the standard teaching qualifications to fill open positions. On average across OECD countries, 9.1% of all teachers in primary and secondary education were not fully qualified in 2024/25. In some systems, staffing pressures are exacerbated by high levels of temporary absences among teachers. For example, the share of teachers who were absent for more than two months during the 2024/25 school year reached 11% in Austria and 9% in Korea.

Although most education systems in the OECD face some teacher shortages, they are not evenly distributed. In some countries, such as Norway, shortages are particularly acute in remote rural regions, while in others they predominantly affect individual schools, often in disadvantaged areas. Almost everywhere, shortages are more pronounced in some subjects than in others, with mathematics and natural sciences particularly affected. In contrast, teacher shortages are less widespread in arts, social studies and physical education.

Education systems have tools to increase the supply of teachers

Education systems can attract strong candidates to the teaching profession in multiple ways. Working conditions, including salaries and working hours, matter, but the attractiveness of the profession depends on a much broader range of factors. Relationships with students, parents and school leaders, the school climate, professional autonomy and public recognition of the profession all influence the job satisfaction of teachers.

On average across the OECD, 85% of teachers express satisfaction with their jobs, similar to those in other professions. However, there are significant differences across countries. In Japan, one of the countries with the lowest number of unfilled vacancies, primary, secondary and vocational teachers are 20 percentage points more likely to be satisfied with their jobs than workers in other professions, while in Chile, one of the country with the highest share of vacancies, they are 21 percentage points less likely than other workers to be satisfied with their jobs.

Another means of addressing shortages is to offer mid-career professionals in other sectors well-designed pathways into teaching, which can also help to diversify the teaching profession. Countries such as Australia and the Netherlands, where more than 15% of lower secondary teachers are second-career teachers, offer flexible entry routes that combine employment-based training and recognition of prior experience. However, other countries lack any such structured pathways, and in many the share of second-career teachers is in the low single digits.

Teacher shortages reflect broader labour-market pressures

Even if they use all the levers available to increase teacher supply, education systems are unlikely to eliminate shortages altogether. Teacher shortages partly reflect economy-wide shortages of skilled workers driven by a combination of structural and cyclical factors, such as population ageing and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recruiting teachers becomes more challenging if fewer people are entering the labour market and employment opportunities outside of education are plentiful.

Indeed, labour shortages in other sectors are often more severe than in teaching. Although vacancy rates are difficult to compare across sectors, the data suggest that they are higher in the overall economy than in the teaching profession in more than half the countries with available data. As long as economy-wide skills shortages persist, education systems are likely to face challenges in recruiting staff as they compete with other sectors for a limited number of workers. Like other sectors, education will therefore also face growing pressure to improve productivity and make more effective use of its workforce. Technology, greater use of specialised support staff and new ways of organising teaching may help teachers to devote a larger share of their time to the tasks where their expertise adds the greatest value.

Declining enrolment will not automatically ease shortages

Education systems must also respond to staffing challenges by becoming more flexible in how they allocate teachers. This will become even more important as demographic trends reshape both the demand for and supply of teachers. Across the OECD, the number of children aged 5-14 is projected to fall by 9% between 2024 and 2033. This decline in student numbers might alleviate teacher shortages and offer education systems an opportunity to reassess teacher deployment. However, trends over the past decade have shown that declining enrolment does not always reduce demand for teachers, as many countries have maintained or even increased the number of teachers and classes as student numbers fell.

It will also be important to align teaching positions with changing student numbers to prevent teacher shortages from worsening in the face of an ageing workforce, as 25% of secondary teachers across the OECD are aged 55 or older and therefore close to retirement. Unless managed effectively, declining student numbers and teacher retirements could deepen shortages in some regions or schools while leading to class sizes that are financially unsustainable in others.

Changing labour markets create challenges beyond teacher shortages

Labour markets shape education systems not only through their ability to recruit teachers but also through the value they place on qualifications. Education systems must ensure that the qualifications they provide remain relevant as the demand for skills evolves in response to technological change. In this context, recent developments in unemployment rates by educational attainment warrant attention.

Between 2023 and 2025, the unemployment rate among tertiary-educated young adults (25-34 year-olds) rose by 0.4 percentage points on average across the OECD. Over the same period, the average unemployment rate among young adults with upper secondary attainment fell by 0.2 percentage points, narrowing the gap between the two from 2.4 to 1.8 percentage points. This is notable because it is the first period since the data series began in 2000 in which average unemployment rose among tertiary-educated young adults but fell among those with upper secondary qualifications.

These trends are sometimes attributed to artificial intelligence reducing labour-market demand for young tertiary graduates. However, tertiary qualifications still provide substantial labour-market benefits, and the evidence for a lasting AI-driven shift in the demand for skills remains limited. Given the potentially far-reaching implications of such a shift, education systems need to monitor labour-market indicators closely and be prepared to respond if there are signs that the labour-market advantage of tertiary qualifications is weakening.