In 2009, almost 19% of those in employment in the EU were working part-time (Chart 73) – a share that was up compared to the year before, after having been more-or-less stable in recent years. Less than 14% of employees had a fixed-term contract in 2009, the share having decreased by about 0.5 percentage points per year since 2007, following a steady rise between 2002 and 2007. The share of temporary workers follows developments in the economic situation quite closely. Finally, about 16% of workers were self-employed in 2009, which is more-or-less in line with the two previous years.
In a longer-term perspective, part-time employment has accounted for a significant part of the overall expansion in employment in the EU since 2000, even though full-time jobs still account for the majority of employment creation in this period.
At the same time, permanent jobs account for the vast majority of overall employment growth since 2000, with fixed-term jobs accounting for a much smaller, but still important, share.
The incidence of part-time work varies considerably between Member States. Its share in total employment in 2009 ranged from 48% in the Netherlands, where the share of part-time employment is considerably higher than in any other Member State, to less than 4% in Bulgaria and Slovakia (Chart 74). Relatively high shares of 25% or more are found in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but the overall share of part-time employment remains low in most of the new Member States and Greece. This illustrates the strong geographical division in the use of part-time employment, it being relatively uncommon in southern and eastern Member States and relatively frequent in northern Member States.
Women commonly work part-time in a number of Member States. In the Netherlands, more than 75% of female workers did so in 2009, while 40% or more did so in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For men part-time work is relatively uncommon, accounting for more than 10% of male employment only in Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Fixed-term contracts are relatively common in Spain and Poland, where 25% or more of employees had such a contract in 2009. In contrast, temporary work accounts for less than 5% of employees in Romania, Slovakia and the Baltic States. Fixed-term contracts are more frequent among female than male employees in most Member States, although the average difference at EU level is limited. In Cyprus the share of fixed-term contracts for women was 20% in 2009 while, for men, it was only 7.5%. Finland and Sweden also displayed considerably higher shares of fixed-term contracts among women as compared with men (Chart 75).