Luxembourg 3rd in World Talent Ranking

23 November 2020

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Luxembourg comes out 3rd in the 2020 World Talent Ranking, which is an improvement with two places compared to the previous year. The country notably stands out for its ability to attract and retain talent and the availability of foreign highly-skilled personnel.

Published by the Swiss institute IMD, the World Talent Ranking illustrates the capacity of an economy to develop as well as attract talent to strengthen its competitiveness. According to the study, Switzerland, Denmark and Luxembourg are the three most competitive economies in the world with respect to talent.

The study looks at three factors in order to quantify the quality of an economy’s talent pool:

Investment and Development: the ability to foster domestic talent
Appeal: the ability to retain homegrown talent and to draw from the international talent pool
Readiness: the quantity of the skills and competences available in the country

Solid talent investments, high appeal

Luxembourg’s overall move from 5th place in 2019 to 3rd this year is partly a result of the country’s performance in investment and development, where it moves up from 5th to 3rd place. It is ranked as the best economy in the world in terms of total public expenditure on education (per student) and in the quality of education in primary school (as measured by pupil-teacher ratio).

In the appeal category, Luxembourg ranks 5th. The country is 2nd best in the world in terms of its ability attract and retain talent, 4th in the availability of foreign highly-skilled staff and 3rd in the remuneration of services professions.

Luxembourg is in 19th place in the readiness category. This is due to executive opinions about, for example, the availability of competent senior managers and the effectiveness of the primary and secondary education. However, the country ranks 1st in the world for labour force growth, 4th for language skills and 6th for international experience.