Archive:Statistics on employment characteristics of households
- Data extracted in June 2016. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Main tables and Database.
European Union Labour force survey - Annual results 2015
This article presents some of the main results for 2015 of the EU Labour force survey (LFS) for the European Union (EU) as a whole, for all Member States individually, as well as for two candidate countries and three EFTA countries.
The topics of this article are:
- employees
- self-employed persons
- part-time employment
- employees with limited duration contracts
- foreign workers
- the size of the principal population groups in the labour force survey, and how they relate to one another
This article should be read together with Employment rates and Europe 2020 national targets and Underemployment and potential additional labour force statistics, for a more complete picture of the situation on the labour market in 2015.
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Main statistical findings
In 2015, the EU unemployment rate continued to fall, to 9.4 per cent, and was at its lowest since 2010. This was the second year in a row with a markedly diminished rate. Regarding unemployment, we see that the crisis which started in the end of 2008 peaked in the beginning of 2013. There are, however, large differences between the countries; some have returned to or even improved on their pre-crisis levels, others have stabilized at much higher rates, and yet others show little or no effects from the crisis at all (see figure timeline unemployment)
We also find improvements in the employment rate, which stood at 70.1 per cent in 2015. This is the second best annual result since the start of the data series in 1995. For more results on the employment rate, please see Employment rates and Europe 2020 national targets.
Unemployment
The situation in 2015
The EU annual average unemployment rate was 9.4 per cent in 2015, whereas it was 10.9 in the Euro-zone . The national levels inside the EU ranged from 4.6 per cent in Germany to 24.9 per cent in Greece. For the non-member states covered by this data set there were even larger differences , from 4.0 per cent in Iceland to 26.1 per cent in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Map 1 shows the situation for all countries in 2015: Germany clearly stands out as the member state with the lowest unemployment, joined by the non-member states Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland. The following group (5-7.4 per cent) has the United Kingdom as the largest economy, and also includes a continuous corridor of the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, and Romania on one side, a Scandinavian / Baltic cluster of Sweden, Denmark, and Estonia on another, as well as the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Four of the eight countries having unemployment from 7.5-9.9 per cent form a north-eastern group, from Poland through most of the Baltic, and into Finland. Joining them, in a more scattered fashion, are Belgium, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Ireland. France and Italy form the core of the 10-15 per cent group, which also includes Slovakia, Portugal, and Turkey. The highest unemployment levels were recorded in Cyprus, Croatia, Spain, Greece, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Development over the period 2000 - 2015
Looking at the development over time (figure 1) rather than at a snap shot of 2015, we find when comparing 2000 to 2015, that four countries (France, Hungary, Romania, United Kingdom) have had a rather stable unemployment rate. Another ten countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Finland) have shown clear improvements over this period. The remaining sixteen countries in the data set are worse off in 2015 than they were in 2000.
Narrowing the perspective a bit, to the boom and bust years of 2007-13, we find that there are four countries which even managed to decrease their unemployment rate during the crisis: Germany, Malta, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Turkey. In addition, six countries experienced an increase in unemployment of less than one percentage point (Belgium, Austria, Poland, Romania, Norway, Switzerland). By contrast, eleven countries had increases of five percentage points or more, two of which had increases of more than 15 percentage points (Greece and Spain).
On average for the EU, the crest of the most recent unemployment wave broke in late 2013, and has continued to recede in 2014 and 2015. It varies, however, not less than eight years between the individual countries on when they had their highest unemployment level after the crisis (Germany and Turkey in 2007. France, Luxembourg, Austria, Finland and Norway in 2015).
Long-term unemployment
Combating long-term unemployment is a high priority goal, as being unemployed for more than a year has negative consequences both for the unemployed persons, as it is linked closely to poverty and to a decreasing chance of finding a job, as well as a negative impact on public finances, and on the EU 2020 policy goal of increased employment.
In 2015, practically half of those who were unemployed in the EU (48.5 per cent) were long-term unemployed. For the Euro-zone the number was 51.6. Looking at figure 2, we see that the United Kingdom, Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Turkey did rather well, with less than a third of the unemployed being long-term unemployed, whereas Greece, Slovakia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia were in the opposite situation, with more than two thirds of the unemployed being long-term.
A distribution of the data on five year age groups (figure 3) clearly shows that the occurrence of long-term unemployment increases with increased age. The degree of the correlation varies between the countries (compare for instance Netherlands to Italy), but the general trend is very clear.
Youth unemployment
Regarding youth unemployment, a very common misunderstanding is to think that a 40 per cent youth unemployment rate means that 40 per cent of all persons aged 15-24 are unemployed. This is incorrect because the youth unemployment rate is defined as the number of unemployed persons aged 15–24 divided by the economically active population for the same age group. A large proportion of persons 15-24 are in education, i.e., not economically active ,as opposed to older persons, who for the most part are not in education any longer, and to a large extent have a job. The unemployment rate is calculated in the same way regardless of the age group, but this misunderstanding has a larger effect when looking at the younger age groups, for the reason just mentioned.[1] This is why we in figure 4 we provide both the unemployment rate and the unemployment ratio
We see in figure 4 that the youth unemployment rate is at a two digit level in all EU countries except Germany. The lower end of the scale (10.0 to 14.9 per cent) includes the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, and the UK. On the opposite side we find Greece, Spain, Croatia, and Italy. This is a pattern which closely resembles the overall unemployment rate, as seen in Map 1, but the rates are higher for younger persons than for the total averages . Seen together Figure 3 we can therefore conclude that young persons are more exposed to unemployment than older persons, but the situation is the opposite regarding the length of the unemployment spell.
If we instead consider the unemployment ratio, a part of the differences between the countries disappears. Whereas the highest unemployment rate (Greece, 49.8 per cent) is almost 7 times higher than the lowest unemployment rate (Germany, 7.2 per cent), this measurement shrinks to slightly above four times for the unemployment ratio (16.8 per cent for Spain and 4.1 per cent for the Czech Republic).
Employees
A vast majority of persons who work are employees. For the average of the EU-28 this number stands at 84.6 per cent (Figure 5). Some differences do exist across the countries, but the general pattern holds for all of them: employees outnumber self-employed by a wide margin everywhere. Only in three countries is the proportion of employees below 75 per cent (Greece, Romania, Turkey). Five countries have more than nine out of ten working persons as employees (Denmark, Estonia, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway)
Employees working part-time
As seen in Figure 6, for the EU-28 we find that part-time employment has a marked correlation with gender, and also some correlation with age: in all but three cases (young persons in Romania, middle aged persons in Romania, and young persons in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) women are more likely to work part-time than men. When looking at the EU-28 average, for the youngest persons (15-24), women are 1.6 times as likely as men to work part-time. This increases to 4.5 times for the middle aged group (25-49), and falls somewhat for the oldest group (50-64), down to 3.9 times.
Looking only at age, the most prevalent situation is that part-time is used most among younger persons, decreases for the middle age groups, and the rises slightly again for the oldest group. However, there are notable differences among the countries: Denmark shows a large drop in part-time workers between youngest and the middle age group, for both men and women, whereas Germany has a steady increase throughout for women, and a decrease for men.
Concerning levels, the Netherlands and Bulgaria are the extreme cases: a large majority of Dutch women work part-time, no matter their age, whereas part-time work is almost non-existent in Bulgaria, for both genders.
The other element in the chart, the employment rate, shows that a high employment rate for young persons and a high use of part-time work for young persons appear at the same time in Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland, but the same pattern is not apparent (that is, either high employment rate or high use of part-time work, but not both at the same time) in Ireland, Austria, Slovenia, or the United Kingdom.
We also see that a high employment rate for young men correlates with a high employment rate for older men in 12 countries, whereas it does not correlate particularly well in 10 other countries. For women the situation is correlation in in 11 countries, and no correlation in 12 countries.
See also Underemployment and potential additional labour force statistics for a further analysis of persons who involuntarily work part-time.
Persons with time limited contracts
More than half of the young persons in employment in Germany, Spain, France, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovenia worked under temporary contracts in 2015 (figure 7). By contrast, very few (less than 15 per cent) did so in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, and the United Kingdom.
The use of temporary contracts falls with increase age. Women tend to be marginally more likely to have such contracts, but the overall gender differences are small, across all countries.
Working hours of employees
The usual working time per person per week is on average . . .
Self-employed
In 2014 self-employed persons (including family workers) accounted for 16.4 % of total EU employment. Of the 35.8 million self-employed persons in the EU, 28.6 million worked full-time and 7.1 million part-time. The proportion of women among the self-employed was much lower (34.2 %) than among employees, but was higher among part-time self-employed persons (55.4 %).
The proportion of self-employed persons (excluding family workers) varied significantly between countries. It was above 20 % in Greece (31.3 %) and Italy (23.3 %) and Portugal (20.9 %), and below 10 % in Luxembourg (8.3 %), Denmark (8.7 %) and Estonia (8.9 %). Staff was employed by 28.1 % of self-employed persons in the EU. The proportion of self-employed with staff among the self-employed was higher than 40 % in Hungary (48.1 %), Germany (44.1 %), Austria (41.7 %) and Denmark (40.3 %), and below 20 % in Romania (5.6 %), the United Kingdom (17.1 %) and the Czech Republic (19.9 %) (see Figure 2).
Foreign workers in the EU
In 2014 there were 15.2 million persons living and working in an EU Member State of which they were not a citizen, accounting for 7.0 % of total EU employment. 7.3 million of them were citizens from another EU Member State and 7.9 million were non-EU citizens. The highest proportions of foreign workers among all employed persons in the EU were recorded in Luxembourg (50.5 %) and Cyprus (19.2 %). Among the EFTA countries, Switzerland had a relatively high proportion of foreign workers (24.6 %) (see lfsa_egan).
In the EU as a whole, the employment rate of citizens from another EU Member State [2] was significantly higher (69.2 %) than that for non-EU citizens (53.4 %) and even for nationals (64.9 %). In 17 Member States the employment rate for foreign citizens from another Member State was higher than the rate for nationals. It was highest in Slovakia (80.3 %), Latvia [3] (78.9 %), the United Kingdom (77.9 %) and Estonia (77.5 %). The employment rate for non-EU citizens was above 70 % in the Czech Republic, Cyprus and Latvia. (see lfsa_ergan).
In the last two years, more than one million persons took up residence and worked in an EU Member State other than their country of citizenship. Of these, 41.2 % took up residence and worked in the United Kingdom, 21.6 % in Germany, 7.7 % in Belgium and 4.5 % in Austria respectively Spain (see Figure 3).
736 000 foreign workers who migrated to or within EU countries in the last two years were citizens from another EU Member State and some 379 000 were non-EU citizens. Compared with 2012, the total number of non-national employed persons who had recently moved to an EU country other than their country of citizenship increased by 12.4 %. The growth is due to increased mobility of EU citizens; the mobility of non-EU citizens has however declined. Furthermore the trends across Member States were very different (see Table 2).
Most of these foreign workers did not move alone within or into the EU. In 2014, around 1.8 million family members [4] took up residence with them.
Synoptic overview: population by labour status
The synoptic overview (see Figure 9) summarises key results on the labour status of persons aged 15 years and older in the EU-28. The information comprises the following categories: employed, unemployed and persons not in the labour force.
The results include information on self-employed persons, employees, persons in part-time and full-time jobs and persons in permanent and temporary jobs. The results also contain information on short- and long-term unemployment and the number of persons seeking a full-time or part-time job.
Figure 6 reports absolute numbers and the specific proportion of females, as well as of young and elderly persons.
Data sources and availability
Source: the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) is a large sample, quarterly survey providing results for the population in private households in the EU, EFTA and the candidate countries. Conscripts in military or community service are not included in the results.
Reference period: Yearly results are obtained as averages of the four quarters in the year.
Coverage: The data for France cover the metropolitan territory (excluding overseas regions) Country codes: Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), the Czech Republic (CZ), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Estonia (EE), Ireland (IE), Greece (EL), Spain (ES), France (FR), Croatia (HR), Italy (IT), Cyprus (CY), Latvia (LV), Lithuania (LT), Luxembourg (LU), Hungary (HU), Malta (MT), the Netherlands (NL), Austria (AT), Poland (PL), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Slovenia (SI), Slovakia (SK), Finland (FI), Sweden (SE), the United Kingdom (UK), Iceland (IS), Norway (NO), Switzerland (CH), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (MK), Turkey (TR). The abbreviation MK used for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is a provisional code which does not prejudice in any way the definitive nomenclature for this country, which will be agreed following the conclusion of negotiations currently taking place on this subject at the United Nations.
European aggregates: EU refers to the sum of EU-28 Member States and EA to the sum of the 19 euro area Member States. If data are unavailable for a country, the calculation of the corresponding aggregates takes into account the data for the same country for the most recent period available. Such cases are indicated.
Definitions: The concepts and definitions used in the survey follow the guidelines of the International Labour Organisation. Employment covers persons aged 15 years and over (16 and over in Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, 15-74 years in Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and 16-74 years in Iceland), living in private households, who during the reference week performed work, even for just one hour, for pay, profit or family gain, or were not at work but had a job or business from which they were temporarily absent, for example because of illness, holidays, industrial dispute or education and training.
The LFS employment concept differs from national accounts domestic employment, as the latter sets no limit on age or type of household, and also includes the non-resident population contributing to GDP and conscripts in military or community service.
Unemployment covers persons aged 15-74 (16-74 in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Iceland) who were not employed during the reference week, were currently available for work and had either been actively seeking work in the past four weeks or had already found a job starting within the next three months.
Long-term unemployment covers persons unemployed for one year or more. Youth unemployment is unemployment of persons aged 15 to 24. Citizenship is defined according to the national legislation of each country.
Definitions of indicators reported in this publication are available on the EU-LFS Statistics Explained website: EU Labour Force Survey (Statistics Explained)
Context
The 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. The EU-LFS is an important source of information about the situation and trends in the EU labour market.
Each quarter around 1.8 million interviews are conducted throughout the participating countries to obtain statistical information for some 100 variables. Due to the diversity of information and the large sample size the EU-LFS is also an important source for other European statistics like Education statistics or Regional statistics.
See also
Further Eurostat information
Publications
- Labour market statistics - Pocketbook - 2011 edition
- European Union Labour force survey - selection of electronic articles (Statistics Explained)
Main tables
Database
Dedicated section
Methodology / Metadata
Notes
- ↑ The article Youth unemployment explains more detailed how youth unemployment is measured.
- ↑ The employment rate of foreign citizens is calculated as the proportion of foreign citizens aged 15-64 of the total number of foreigners aged 15-64 residing in the country.
- ↑ The figure for Latvia lack reliability due to small sample size.
- ↑ Family members include spouses and children in the same household with less than two years residence in an EU Member State other than their country of citizenship or with a non-EU citizenship.