Adult participation in lifelong learning for better employability in selected European countries

Regardless Adult participation in learning (APinL) indicator was by European Commission (2010) in Europe 2020 Strategy targeted with 15% by 2020, for European Union (EU) countries the respective percentage in 2017 was 10.9% only, with coefficient of variation of 70.4%. Recently it has been increasing for majority of European countries, being still quite low in many of them. In 2017 the lowest values was in Romania, 1.1%, and the highest in Sweden, 30%, in some highly developed economies, APinL was below the EU-28 average, e.g. in Germany 8.5%, and in some countries, like Croatia, decrease rate for APinL in 2017 related to 2006 was -19.4%, from 3.1% to 2.5%. Applying data exploration, trend, correlation, regression and cluster analysis, this paper investigates economic, social and digital society development indicators influencing APinL in selected European countries in 2017. It was positively correlated with Gross Domestic Product per capita, employment rate, percentage of those high educated, having the strongest positive correlation with Digital skills. It showed weak negative correlations with middle and low education level indicators. Two valid regression models enlightening impacts on APinL were developed. Finally, four clusters of similar European countries were created, occasionally included the countries that joined them surprisingly.