Archive:Hours of work and absences from work - quarterly statistics
Data extracted in July 2020
Planned article update: October 2020
Highlights
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During the first quarter of 2020, the labour market was affected by COVID-19 measures taken by Member States. Employment and unemployment, as defined by the ILO concept, are in this particular situation, not sufficient to describe the developments taking place in the labour market. Therefore, Eurostat was triggered to develop a set of additional seasonally adjusted quarterly indicators which should help to capture the most recent movements on the labour market in the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU).
The newly developed indicators include the total labour market slack, which comprises all persons who have an unmet need for employment either because they are unemployed according to the ILO definition, are close to unemployment while not fulfilling all ILO criteria, or are working part-time and would like to work additional hours. Furthermore, absences from work broken down by reason are published, as well as an index of total actual hours worked in the main job. Recent job leavers and starters, as well as weekly total absences and transitions out of employment, complete the set of newly developed indicators.
In this article, the focus is on the quarterly changes in the actual hours worked in the main job, using an index where the reference (100 %) is the year 2006. The index indicates the percentage of change in the total hours of work in the considered quarter of a year compared to the total working hours in 2006. The value of the index is influenced by the number of employed people in the considered quarter of a year, as well as by the number of hours worked by each of these employed people. Please note that the presented data is seasonally adjusted.
This article aims to describe the hours of work in the European Union (EU) as a whole, for all EU Member States individually, as well as for the United Kingdom, three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and four candidate countries (Macedonia, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey).
The article is a part of the online publication Labour market in the light if the COVID-19 pandemic - quarterly statistics alongside namely with the articles Labour market slack - unmet need for employment and Absences from work.
Full article
Sharp drop in the working hours at EU level in the first quarter of 2020
Between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, the index of total actual hours worked in the main job dropped sharply in the EU-27: from 101.9 index points to 96.8 index points (decrease of 5.1 %). Compared to the reference year 2006 (which counts as 100 %), the working hours dropped by 3.2 %. Since the beginning of the time series (first quarter of 2006), the steepest drop can be seen in the second quarter of 2013, with an 95.4 index points (compared to 2006 it dropped by 4.6 %). This drop resulted from the financial and economic crisis which started in 2008.
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_ahw_q)
Looking at the gender differences, women were hit harder than men by the COVID-19 crisis. The index of total actual working hours for the female population fell from 108.0 to 102.4 index points between the last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020 (decrease of 5.6 %). For the male population, it dropped from 97.9 to 93.1 index points (decrease of 4.8 %).
Nevertheless, in the first quarter of 2020, the index of total actual hours worked is still higher for women (102.4 index points) than for men (93.1 index points), meaning than the total hours of work has more increased since 2006 for the female population than for the male population. With an index lower than 100, the total hours worked for the male population has even decreased since the reference year of 2006.
Impact on working hours at country level
The total working hours have been affected differently across countries since 2006. Different patterns can indeed be observed (see Video 1).
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_ahw_q)
Video 1: Index of total actual hours worked in the main job by country and sex
Click the image for an interactive view of the data
In Europe, Italy was the first country that was initially hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. A quarter-to-quarter difference is highly shown for this country: during the first quarter of 2020 the index of total actual hours worked in the main job had decreased from 99 index points in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 90 index points. Also here, the working hours for women were affected more: a drop from 107 to 96 index points, compared to a fall from 95 to 86 index points for men. The impact for Italy during the debt crisis was even less.
In contrast, in Bulgaria, the impact during the first quarter of 2020 was much less: during the first quarter of 2019 the index accounted for 100 points while it was 99 index points during the first three months of 2020. The dept crisis showed more impact: from its highest point of 109 index points in the first quarter of 2008 to its lowest point in the fourth quarter of 2014: 94 index points. The hours of work were more or less similarly affected for men and women.
Although Malta shows a strong decrease in the index of total hours worked in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the last quarter of 2019 (164 against 175 index points in total with higher increase for men than women), this country has a most striking evolution over time. Compared to quarter 1 of 2019, there is an increase in the total hours of work of more than 60 % (63.6 %: 100 versus 164 index points). The index of working hours of women has more than doubled (234 against 98 index points respectively), while the index for men increased much less relatively speaking (139 against 102 index points respectively).
In Greece, the index of total hours worked in the main job, was mostly affected during the debt crisis: in the fourth quarter of 2013 the index reached the lowest level so far, i.e. 76 index points. In the first quarter of 2020, the index was higher, i.e. 78 points. In the last quarter of 2019 the index accounted for 85 points. All in all, over the whole period from 2006 on, Greek women had a higher index of total working hours than men. This has not been changed up and until the first quarter of 2020.
Focus on the changes in the last two quarters
Italy most affected in first quarter of 2020
For the previously described differences between quarters, 2006 has been taken as a reference, i.e. being 100 %. In the last parts of this article the quarterly change (quarter one of 2020 against quarter four of 2019) is described. Thus, the "actual" percentage change is given from quarter-to-quarter, i.e. the previous quarter is the reference, not 2016. All Member States, for which data are available, experienced a drop in the percentage of total actual hours worked between the fourth quarter 2019 and the first quarter 2020 except Finland (+0.3 %). The highest overall falls were observed in Italy (-9.7 %), Slovakia (-8.7 %), and Austria (-7.9 %).
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_ahw_q)
Women hit the hardest
The percentage change in total actual hours worked in the main job between the first quarter of 2020 and the fourth quarter of 2019 is mostly visible for women: -5.2 % against -4.9 for men in the 27 Member States. In EU-27, the working hours of Italian and Slovakian women are mostly affected during the starting period of the COVID-19 pandemic: for them there was a decrease in working hours of 10.3 and 10.2 % respectively (compared to -9.3 % and 7.6 % of men respectively). On the other hand, in Hungary, Malta, France and Spain, the hours worked for men were more affected: -7.9 %, -7.6 %, -7.1 % and -5.7 % against -0.7 %, -3.1 %, -4.3 % and -4.6 % for women respectively.
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_ahw_q)
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
All figures in this article are based on seasonally adjusted quarterly results from European labour force survey (EU-LFS).
Source: The European Union labour force survey (EU-LFS) is the largest European household sample survey providing quarterly and annual results on labour participation of people aged 15 and over as well as on persons outside the labour force. It covers residents in private households. Conscripts in military or community service are not included in the results. The EU-LFS is based on the same target populations and uses the same definitions in all countries, which means that the results are comparable between countries.
Context
The COVID-19 virus hit Europe in January and February 2020, with the first cases confirmed in Spain, France and Italy. COVID-19 infections have now been diagnosed in all European Union (EU) Member States.
To fight the pandemic, EU Member States have taken a wide variety of measures.
From the second week of March, most countries closed retail shops apart from supermarkets, pharmacies and banks. Bars, restaurants and hotels have also been closed. In Italy and Spain, non-essential production was stopped and several countries imposed regional or even national lock-down measures which further stifled the economic activities in many areas.
In addition, schools were closed, public events were cancelled and private gatherings (with numbers of persons varying from 2 to 50) were banned in most Member States.
The large majority of the prevention measures were taken during mid-March 2020 and most of the prevention measures and restrictions were kept for the whole of April and May 2020.
The first quarter 2020 is consequently the first quarter in which the labour market across the EU has been affected by COVID-19 measures taken by the Member States.
Employment and unemployment as defined by the ILO concept are, in this particular situation, not sufficient to describe the developments taking place in the labour market. In this first phase of the crisis, active measures to contain employment losses led to absences from work rather than dismissals, and individuals could not search for work or were not available due to the containment measures, thus not counting as unemployed.
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