Archive:Employment - quarterly statistics

Data extracted in April 2021

Planned article update: 30 July 2021

Highlights

After a sharp fall from 73.2 % in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 71.7 % in the second quarter of 2020, the EU employment rate went up to 72.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Across EU Member States, variations in the employment rate between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020 ranged from a decrease of 2.3 p.p. in Spain to an increase of 0.9 p.p. in Poland.

Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

The health crisis caused by to the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on employment in the European Union. Many EU Member States have implemented measures such as short-term work or financial assistance to businesses to mitigate the negative effects of the COVID-19 crisis on employment and businesses. However, employment was clearly impacted particularly in the second quarter of 2020. Several factors could explain this: inflows into employment could have been reduced because businesses slowed, revised, or cancelled their hiring processes, or because they decided not to renew fixed-term contracts or probationary periods, for example. As explained further in this article, these specific effects affecting directly young people were clearly visible during the second quarter of 2020. Furthermore, businesses may have laid off employees, increasing outflows from the labour force. As a result, the third quarter of 2020 is characterised by a reduction in containment measures in many countries, followed by an increase in activity. The fourth quarter of 2020 confirmed the increase recorded in the previous quarter, albeit with a more temperate increase.

This article focuses on the changes in employment observed during the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic based on the quarterly data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). It depicts recent and long-term employment trends, primarily on a global European scale, but also specifically by gender, age, and level of educational attainment. A specific analysis dedicated to the evolution of temporary contracts and part-time work.

This article is supplemented by another article that provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of the employed population by occupation, sector of economic activity and professional status by EU Member State. Both articles are part of the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current version of these articles focuses on the evolution of employment from the last quarter 2019 to the third quarter of 2020, i.e. from October-December 2019 to July-September 2020. They will be reviewed in July 2021 in order to include data from the first quarter of 2021.

Note: This article mainly uses seasonally adjusted data. Given that the adjustment model applies to the whole time series, figures released for previous quarters may have changed with the inclusion in the model of this last quarter (fourth quarter of 2020). Please also take note that figures presented in this article may differ in some cases from the source data due to continuous revision of the Eurostat database (Employment and unemployment (Labour Force Survey)).

Full article

Employment overview in 2020 in the EU and the Member States

Following the most severe decline since 2000 (-1.4 p.p. from Q1 to Q2 2020), the employment rate increased by 0.6 p.p. in Q3 2020 and by 0.3 p.p. in Q4 2020

Since 2013, the share of employed people in the total EU population kept on growing from one quarter to the next until the third and the fourth quarter of 2019 (using seasonally adjusted data) when it remained stable and slightly decreased in the first quarter of 2020 (-0.1 p.p.). However, from the first quarter of 2020 (Q1 2020) to the second quarter of 2020 (Q2 2020), the share of people in employment went down from 73.1 % to 71.7 % (-1.4 p.p.), recording the sharpest cut since 2000 (see Figure 1). The employment rate increased by 0.6 p.p. between the second and third quarters of 2020, followed by a 0.3 p.p. increase in the fourth quarter of 2020. These recent increases have not yet compensated for the decrease observed in the second quarter of 2020.

Another relevant finding concerns the labour force (also known as the active population), which includes both employed and unemployed people: its share of the total population reached 78.2 % in Q4 2020, following a 1.3 p.p. decrease between Q1 and Q2 2020. In contrast to employment, it has nearly recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels (the labour force share was 78.3 % in Q4 2020). This could be explained in part by the number of people who likely gave up their job search during Q2 2020 and thus did not meet the ILO criteria for being considered unemployed and thus part of the labor force. However, in Q3 2020, those people began looking for work again and, as a result, were reintegrated into the labour force (being considered again as unemployed). More information on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the unemployed population can be found in the article Key figures on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the labour market.

Figure 1: Evolution of employment and active population in the EU
(people aged 20-64, Q1 2000 - Q4 2020, in % of the total population)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

23 out of 27 EU Member States had lower employment rate in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019

In order to provide an accurate picture of what happened in 2020 in terms of employment, Figure 2 presents the employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 in each quarter from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the fourth quarter of 2020. This figure clearly shows that most countries were steeply affected during the second quarter of 2020. The employment rate in Spain, Ireland and Estonia fell by more than 3p.p. between the first and the second quarter of 2020, respectively by 4.2p.p., 4.0p.p. and 3.5p.p. which were the largest quarter-on-quarter drops recorded in 2020. From Q2 to Q3 2020, the employment rate increased only in Luxembourg (+0.2p.p.).

Despite the EU-wide upturn between the second and third quarters, the employment rate in ten countries continued to fall, albeit to a lesser extent than in the previous quarter (all decreases were between -0.5p.p. and -0.1p.p.). This also implies that, at the time, the majority of countries' employment rates were stable or increasing. The most significant rebounds compared to the second quarter were found in Bulgaria and Spain (+1.6p.p.), Austria (+1.5p.p.), Ireland (+1.4p.p.) and France Metropolitan and France with respectively +1.1p.p. and +1.0p.p.

From the third to the fourth quarter of 2020, the employment rate increased in 18 out of 27 EU Member States, Luxembourg and Estonia registered the largest increases (+2.1p.p.) and (+1.2p.p.). The employment rate remained stable in four countries, Germany, Czechia, Malta and Slovenia, and slightly decreased in five, namely Hungary, Cyprus, Austria, Belgium and Slovakia with drops between -0.3p.p. and -0.1p.p.

Only four EU Member States recovered or even exceeded their fourth-quarter 2019 levels in the fourth quarter of 2020. This is the case of Poland (+0.9p.p. in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019), Luxembourg (+0.6p.p.), Malta (+0.5p.p.) and Greece (+0.1p.p.).

Figure 2: Employment rate by quarter and by EU Member States
(in % of the total population, age group 20-64, Q4 2019 - Q4 2020)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

Sweden (80.6 %) and Germany (80.0 %) had the highest employment rates among people aged 20 to 64 in Q4 2020 (see Figure 2). Please refer to the methodological note on German data related to all quarters of 2020 in the section "Data sources". In contrast, Greece (61.4), Italy (62.9 %), Spain (66.0 %), Croatia (66.9 %), and Belgium (69.9 %) had the lowest employment rates, with fewer than seven out of ten people employed in the fourth quarter of 2020. In the last quarter of 2020, the employment gender gap in the EU was 11.2 p.p., with 78.2 % of men employed compared to 67.0 %. Largest differences were reported by Italy (19.5p.p.), Romania (19.4 p.p.), Greece (18.5 p.p.) and Malta (18.0 p.p.). There was a significant gender disparity in employment among EU Member States, with the gap being less than 5p.p. in Lithuania, Finland, Latvia, and Estonia.

Figure 3: Employment rate by sex and country, Q4 2020
(people aged 20-64, in % of the total population)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

Figure 4: Change in the employment rate by sex and country
(people aged 20-64, Q3 2020 compared with Q4 2019, in percentage points)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

Differences in the development of the employment rates of men and women between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020 are more or less pronounced across countries, and not systematically in favour of men or women, as displayed in Figure 4. Malta, Germany and Estonia reported the largest differences between men and women. In Malta, the employment rate of men decreased by 1p.p; while those of women went up by 2.3 p.p (gap of 3.3 p.p.). In Germany, the share of employed men fell by 1.4 p.p. while the share of employed women increased by 0.5 p.p. (gap of 1.9 p.p.). In Estonia, the share of employed men fell by 2.9 p.p., while the share of employed women fell by 1.0 p.p. (gap of 1.9 p.p.).

In Q4 2020 young people still far from their level of employment in Q4 2019

The employment rate of young people (aged 15-24) went down in all EU Member States between Q4 2019 and Q3 2020, except in Romania

In the European Union, employed people aged 15-24 accounted for 14.3 million people in the fourth quarter of 2020, accounting for 7.5 % of all employed people aged 15-64.. This proportion was 7.9 % a year earlier, in Q4 2019.

The employment rate in the EU among young people was 31.1% in Q4 2020 against 33.5% in Q4 2019 (-2.4p.p.). Among EU Member states, more than half of young people were employed in the Netherlands (62.5%), Denmark (53.0%) and Austria (50.3%) but less than 20% in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy and Greece. In Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Malta, the employment rate of people aged 15 to 24 fell by more than 5p.p. respectively 6.3p.p. in Ireland and 5.4p.p. in the other three countries.

Figure 5: Employment rate by age group and country, Q4 2020
(in % of the total population)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

Figure 6: Change in the employment rate by age group and country
(Q4 2020 compared with Q4 2019, in percentage points)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_emp_q)

Moreover, in the EU, eight out of ten persons aged between 25 and 54 (80.1 %) were employed in the fourth quarter of 2020 against 80.7% in the fourth quarter of 2019. This age category stood for 141.2 million people in Q4 2020. In Spain and Lithuania, employment was more than 2p.p. lower in Q4 2020 compared to Q4 2019 as shown in Figure 6.

Employed people aged 55-64 stood for 36.2 million people in Q4 2020 in the EU. From Q4 2019 to Q4 2020, the share of employed people aged 55-64 increased by +0.5 p.p., reaching 60.2 % in Q4 2020. Among EU countries, the share of employed people increased 20 countries, remained stable in one and decreased in 6 countries. This share increased the most, by more than 2p.p. between the two quarters, in Slovenia (+4.2p.p.), Poland (+4.0p.p.), Hungary (+3.3p.p.) and Greece (2.3p.p.).

Disparate employment rates for men and women with low, medium and high educational attainment levels

The employment evolution by sex and educational attainment level over the period Q1 2005 - Q4 2020 shows noticeable differences, both for men and women (aged 20-64), according to their level of educational attainment (see Figure 7). First, men with a high educational level (i.e. tertiary education) are always more likely to be employed than men with a medium (i.e. at most upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education) or low educational level (i.e. less than primary, primary or lower secondary education, at most). This was also true of women. Secondly, the lower the educational attainment level, the wider the gap between the employment rates of men and women.

Men and women with a high educational level follow roughly the same developments over time, and maintain a permanent gap between their respective employment rates. Nevertheless, the gender employment gap for people with a high educational level slightly narrowed over time: from 7.7 p.p. in Q1 2005, to 6.0 p.p. in Q4 2020.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, 87.4 % of men and 81.4 % of women with a high educational level were employed. Women with a high educational level were the ones for which the employment rate decreased the least between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020 (i.e. -0.6 p.p.), compared with men with high educational level (-1.0 p.p.) but also with men and women with medium and low educational level (see below).

Focusing on men and women with a medium level of educational attainment, the employment rate followed the same trend for men and women over the period Q1 2005 - Q4 2020, although fluctuations were sometimes slightly more pronounced for one gender than for the other. However, the employment rate of women with a medium educational level was never above or equal to the one of men. A gender employment gap was present over the whole period Q1 2005 - Q4 2020. It corresponded to 13.4 p.p. in Q1 2005, and reached 11.8 p.p. in Q4 2020. Almost eight out of ten men with a medium educational level (78.1 %) were employed against less than two thirds of women (66.3 %) in Q4 2020. For women, the drop between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020 was less sharp than for men (-1.0 for women against -1.3 p.p. for men).

With respect to people with a low level of educational attainment in employment, the employment rate of men with a low educational level corresponded to 65.8 % in Q4 2020. In other words, slightly less than two out of three men with a low level of educational attainment were employed in the fourth quarter of 2020. For women, the employment rate was 43.6 %, meaning that less than half of women with a low educational attainment level were employed. The gap between men and women was 25.9 p.p. in Q1 2005 but still amounted to 22.2 p.p. in Q4 2020.

Figure 7: Employment rate by sex and educational attainment level in the EU
(people aged 20-64, Q1 2005 - Q4 2020, in % of the total population)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_educ_q)

Temporary contracts and part-time employment lag behind

Figure 7: Evolution of part-time employment and temporary contracts Vs total employment in the EU
(people aged 20-64, Q1 2008-Q4 2020, in thousand persons)
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_pt_q)

Cut of more than one temporary contract out of ten

In the fourth quarter 2020, temporary contracts amounted to 10.6 % of the total of EU employment, in other words, slightly more than one out of 10 employed persons in the EU-27 were employed under temporary contracts in Q4 2020 against 11.7 % in Q4 2019. From Q4 2019 to Q2 2020, the number of temporary contracts fell by 15.1% while employment fell by 2.5%. Consecutively, between Q2 2020 and Q4 2020, the temporary contracts increased by 6.0%. Over the period Q4 2019-Q4 2020, they decreased by 10.1% (see Figure 7).

Figure 8 shows the level in each quarter of 2020 by taking Q4 2019 as reference. Based on Figure 8, 23 out of 26 countries for which data is available were below their level of Q4 2019 and in 5 countries, the level of part-time employment were 20% lower than in Q4 2019 Slovakia (69.2%), Greece (75.7 %), Romania (77.3%), Slovenia (77.7%) and Bulgaria (78.3%).

Figure 8: Development of temporary contracts in each quarter of 2020,_Q4 2019=10
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_pt_q)

Decrease by 8% in part-time employment

Part-time employment corresponded in Q4 2020 to 16.6 % of the total of EU employment. From Q4 2019 to Q2 2020, part-time employment dropped by 9.3% while total employment fell by 2.5%. Consecutively, between Q2 2020 and Q4 2020, the number of people in part-time employment increased by 1.4%. Over the period Q4 2019-Q4 2020, they decreased by 8.0% (see Figure 7).

As previously shown for temporary contracts, Figure 9 shows the level in each quarter of 2020 by taking Q4 2019 as reference. Based on Figure 9, five out of twenty six countries for which data is available were at least 10 points below their level of Q4 2019, namely Greece (82.1%), Ireland (89.3%), Malta (89.7%), Romania and Portugal (89.9%).

Figure 9: Development of part-time employment in each quarter of 2020,_Q4 2019=10
Source: Eurostat (lfsi_pt_q)

Source data for tables and graphs

Employment (general) Q4 2020: tables and figures

Data sources

All figures in this article are based on seasonally adjusted quarterly results from the European Union 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.

European aggregates: EU refers to the sum of the 27 EU Member States.

Country note: In Germany, from the first quarter of 2020 onwards, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) is part of a new system of integrated household surveys. Unfortunately, technical issues and the COVID-19 crisis has had a large impact on data collection processes, resulting in low response rates and a biased sample. For this reason, additional data from other integrated household surveys has been used in addition to the LFS subsample, to estimate a restricted set of indicators for the first three quarters of 2020, for the production of LFS Main Indicators. These estimates have been used for the publication of German results, but also in the calculation of EU and EA aggregates. By contrast, EU and EA aggregates published in the Detailed quarterly results (showing more and different breakdowns than the LFS Main Indicators) have been computed using only available data from the LFS subsample. As a consequence, small differences in the EU and EA aggregates in tables from both collections may be observed. For more information, see here.

Definitions: The concepts and definitions used in the Labour Force Survey follow the guidelines of the International Labour Organisation.

Five different articles on detailed technical and methodological information are linked from the overview page of the online publication EU Labour Force Survey.

Context

The COVID-19 health crisis 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 second quarter of 2020 is consequently the quarter in which the labour market across the EU has been strongly 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.

The quarterly data on employment will allow along the quarters to report on the impact of the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic on employment. This specific article focuses on the age and the level of education attainment of employed people in order to determine potential categories more or less affected by the economic downturn. It also shows the evolution of part-time employment and temporary contracts. Another article on the evolution of employment by activity and professional status is also available in the context of the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.