92% of international doctorate holders who graduated in France are professionally integrated

Paris: The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research has released a “Note Flash” on the professional integration of doctorate holders who graduated in 2020. According to this statistical report, the professional integration percentage of French nationals doctors three years after earning their doctorate is very close to that of foreign nationals (94% vs. 92%). Among these international doctorate holders who graduated in France in 2020 and were employed in 2023, 57% were working in France and held managerial-level positions.

The Notes Flash, published on a regular basis by the French Ministry of Higher Education, provide a focused look at key indicators from the Ministry’s statistical office, summarizing initial data analyses. The note titled “Three-Year Professional Integration of 2020 Doctorate Graduates” falls into the category of short, targeted, analysis, this time comparing the 2023 results to those from 2021. This new Note Flash presents the three-year integration outcomes of 2020 doctorate graduates by field of study, gender, and nationality. It is based on a survey conducted between April 2024 and January 2025 across around one hundred institutions offering doctoral degrees. More than 10,000 doctorate holders of all nationalities and ages who passed their degree in France were surveyed regarding their professional status three years after graduation.

The study’s first general finding: three years after completing their thesis, 94% of 2020 doctorate graduates are employed, a 5-point increase compared to just one year after graduation. Once integrated into the professional market, the Ministry notes that 76% hold stable jobs, 94% are employed in executive-level positions, and 95% work full-time. Stability in jobs has increased sharply compared to 2021 (+27 points), though differences persist across disciplines:

Conversely, 80% of doctorate holders in exact sciences and applications and 83% of doctorate holders in sciences of society have a stable job.

What kinds of jobs do they work in? Three years after passing their degree, says the Note, 74% of doctorate holders who graduated in 2020 and currently working are in public or private research. The academic sector is the “first employer” of doctorate holders who graduated in 2020 (48% vs 55%), while private research employs 26% of doctorate holders. And, slightly over a quarter of doctors who graduated in 2020 (26%) work out of the research industry (public sector excl. academic sector and private sector excl. research).

To be noted that 85% of graduate holders declare they are satisfied with their professional situation, but this level of satisfaction varies depending on the discipline: it is higher in exact science and applications (88%), and in life science (85%).

Another observation: in all doctorate holders from 2020, the professional integration of French doctors three years after passing their degree is almost the same as for foreign doctorate holders (94% vs 92%).

The Note Flash shows that in 2020, 43% of doctorate holders who graduated in France were foreign nationals, and 57% of those foreign graduates employed three years later were working in France. The proportion of foreign doctorate holders who graduated in 2020 working in France in executive-level positions (94%) is almost the same as that of French doctorate holders (95%). However, the Ministry notes that foreign doctorate holders are slightly less likely to hold permanent positions (80%) compared to their French counterparts (84%), particularly in the academic sector.

More specifically, 54% of jobs held in France by foreign nationals with doctorate holders awarded in 2020 are in the private sector, compared to 40% for French nationals. Three years after earning their degree, 35% of foreign doctorate holders working in France are employed in private research, nine points higher than French doctorate holders. Conversely, the proportion of foreign doctorate holders working in the academic sector in France is lower than that of French doctorate holders.

“More than half of all doctorates are awarded to men, and their employment conditions are better than those of women.” This is yet another finding, though a familiar one, highlighted by the Ministry’s Note Flash, which goes so far as to speak of “significant gender inequalities.”

In 2020, more than half of doctorates (57%) were awarded to men. But three years after graduation, men enjoy better employment conditions than women: men are more likely to hold permanent positions (78%) compared to women (74%). Men are also more likely to hold full-time, executive-level positions than women. Similarly, in 2023, male graduates were more likely than female graduates to be employed in the private sector overall (43% vs. 36%). Notably, 30% of male doctorate holders work in private-sector R&D, compared to just 21% of female doctorate holders. In contrast, women are more frequently employed in the public sector outside of academia than men.

In another report from the same series of studies, another Ministry Note Flash shows that the number of doctorates awarded in 2024 has declined by 3%, following a 9.6% rise in 2023 due to post-pandemic catch-up.

Some figures are more encouraging: the share of theses defended in less than 40 months rose by 4 points, and the number of first-time doctorate enrollees for the 2024–2025 academic year increased by 3.2% compared to the previous year. Likewise, in 2024–2025, the percentage of first-year PhD students with funding rose to 81%.

Although international joint supervisions still account for a small proportion of doctorate candidates (6%), the number of first-year doctorate students enrolled in joint supervisions has increased by 1.9%. This growth, according to the Ministry, is driven by an increase in joint supervisions enrollments with researchers from Europe (+5.1%) and Africa (+10.2%).