The UK has been found to be one of the top places in Europe for employment prospects.
The research, which ranks employment opportunities across the continent, also pointed to Estonia, Norway and Austria.
All these countries have a decent range of skilled jobs, the lowest proportion of temporary contracts, and relatively low levels of youth unemployment, according to the employment website Glassdoor.
It focussed its study on 17 European states and used eight indicators, including involuntary part-time work and improvements in employment for young people since the bankers kicked off the global financial crisis.
Popping up only at the bottom of the list were Portugal, Spain and Greece where job seekers had the worst prospects.
Currently, Portugal’s unemployment stands at 12.4%, Spain’s at 21.6% while the Greek level is a whopping 24.6%, according to Eurostat.
But younger people fare even worse. Greece and Spain maintain the highest levels in the EU of joblessness for young people under 25. Both of them have a shameful rate of just shy of 50%.
Portugal, while better at nearly 35%, has no reason to hold up its head.
"Greece, Spain and Portugal have continued to struggle with double-digit unemployment and slow economic growth - partly due to inflexible labour market regulations that have proven difficult to reform in recent years,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor.
In the UK, youth unemployment rose to just over 20% in 2011, but is now down to 17%, close to the pre-crisis average of 15%.
Portugal and Spain, along with the Netherlands, are the countries where temporary contracts are most common, with 20% of the workforce affected in each country.
In contrast only 6% of UK workers have temporary contracts.
Typically such contracts are low paid and have little job security or flexibility.
