Archive:Hours of work in detail - quarterly statistics
Data extracted in ... 2021
Planned article update: July 2021
Highlights
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_ewhais)
Since the first quarter of 2020, the labour market has been affected by measures taken by Member States to limit the spread of COVID-19. Measures to fight the pandemic continued during the second and third quarter of 2020. Some of these measures directly or indirectly affected the number of working hours of employed people.
The present article complements the article on Hours of work, with a more detailed analysis of the European Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) quarterly data on working hours in the main job. The number of average actual weekly hours of work in the third quarter are, for example, compared between employees and self-employed persons, as well as across occupations.
Given the level of detail, data used in this article are not seasonally adjusted. For this reason (in order not to be biased by the seasonal effect), data from the last available quarter (third quarter of 2020) are compared with data from the same quarter of the previous year (first to fourth quarter of 2019).
Moreover, to increase the level of comparability between countries, the value of the average actual weekly hours of work for the total population in the third quarter of 2019 has been fixed to 100 for the EU-27 aggregate and for each country. Then, the average actual weekly hours of work for each subpopulation or breakdown for both the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020 is compared with the value previously fixed to 100 (hours of work of total population in third quarter 2019) for the EU-27 aggregate and for each country. This method allows a fair comparison of the different values of the index between the different subpopulations and also between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020 (as it wipes out the effect of a different measurement of actual working hours across countries).
The average hours of work are computed on people that reported working hours of one hour and more in the reference week. Consequently, the presented indexes do not include those who were employed with zero working hours in the reference week.
In this period of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have been temporarily shut down, with people being absent from work and/or in temporary lay-off. To see the effect of the pandemic on the hours of work, evolution of the number of persons included in the average, i.e. the number of persons having reported working hours in the reference week of one hour or more, should also be taken into account. For this reason, this article presents the index of average hours of work corrected for employment; this corresponds to an index of the volume of working hours.
The article is part of the online publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic - quarterly statistics and presents results on the hours of work (quarterly data) of the European Union (EU) as a whole, for all EU Member States individually (except Germany for which data is not yet available), as well as for the three EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and two candidate countries (North Macedonia and Serbia). Based on non-seasonally adjusted data, this article mainly compare data from the all four quarters of 2020 with data from all the four respective quarters of 2019.
Full article
Gender differences in the working hours
Working hours mostly impacted during the second quarter of 2020
During the second quarter of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic progressed together with a continuation, and sometimes a reinforcement, of the measures taken by the EU Member States. At EU level, the volume of working hours declined by -14.8 % between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020. In comparison with the percentage changes that existed during Q1 and Q3 2020 ([] and -2.7 % respectively), the volume of the hours of work were mostly affected during the second quarter of 2020.
[In addition, during the fourth quarter of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to have even less impact on the volume of weekly hours worked. At EU level, the percentage change only declined by [] %]. At country level, there was a slight shift in the ranking of EU Member States that were more or less affected during the third quarter compared with the second quarter. To be more specific, the total volume of working hours of employed persons dropped the most in Spain and Portugal, with -7.3 % and -7.2 % respectively, between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020. The same two countries registered the sharpest drop in the second quarter, but at that time the drop in the total volume of working hours was almost four times bigger. By contrast, during the first quarter, Italy, Slovakia and Croatia displayed the largest decrease in the total volumes of working hours (-10.0 %, -8.9 % and -8.2 % respectively). [describe here what happened during the fourth quarter of 2020]
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_ewhais)
Looking at the gender breakdown, at EU-27 level, the working hours of women decreased slightly less than those of men, with a change of [] % for women and [] % for men, between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020. At country level, men in [] were the most affected in terms of total volume of working hours (i.e. average working hours corrected for employment), with [] % change between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020, followed by men in []([] %) and Spain ([] %). Women followed a different pattern across countries than men. Women in [] registered the largest decrease in working hours, with [] % change in the total volume of working hours, followed by women in []([] %) and []([] %).
[describe the fourth quarter here] Both women (+0.5 %) and men (+0.3 %) in the Netherlands recorded an increase in the total volume of working hours (Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019). In addition, women in Luxembourg increased their hours of work with +4.3 %, whereas men had a decrease of -1.6 %. A similar pattern can be found in Finland and Malta, i.e. an increase for women and a reduction in the total volume of working hours for men. The opposite is true in Poland and Slovakia, where the volume of working hours for women decreased by -0.8 % and -0.2 % and the one for men increased by +0.2 % and +0.5 % respectively. In Croatia, the volume of working hours of men remained stable and the one for women dropped by -5.6 %. Finally, women in Czechia had a stable volume of hours while men saw their volume of working hours increasing (+0.5 %) over the same period.
[add the third quarter here] All in all, the above described results differ from the results obtained for the second quarter (where Q2 2020 was compared to Q2 2019). In terms of percentage change in working hours, the pattern by country and sex has changed between the second and the third quarter and between the second and the first quarter.
Self-employed persons with employees mostly affected
Total hours of work for self-employed persons with employees decreased the most in Lithuania
[Update with Q4 data] At EU level, the index of actual working hours, in the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, was mostly impacted in the group of self-employed persons. Between quarter four of the consecutive years, there was a percentage change of [] % for self-employed with employees and of [] % for their counterparts without employees. Contributing family workers and employees followed with a change in the index of working hours of [] % and [] % respectively (Figure 2). Note that this change is significantly lower than for quarter two (Q2 2020 compared to Q2 2019).
At country level, the most striking changes by professional status were registered for contributing family workers in terms of percentage change between the indexes of Q4 2019 and Q4 2020 (see Figure 2). This pattern is shown throughout all the four quarters of 2020. Among EU Member States with data available, family workers in [] (with [] % change between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020), [] ([] %) and []([] %) faced the largest decreases in their volume of working hours (i.e. index of working hours corrected for employment). By contrast, family workers in [] ([] %, data not shown in Figure 4), [] ([] %) and [] ([] %) had the largest increase. Please note that in some countries the subpopulation of family workers is small and can consequently lead to results with a low reliability.
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_ewhais)
Self-employed persons with employees also saw their volume of working hours changing between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020. [] ([] %), [] ([] %) and [] ([] %) underwent the largest decreases, while [nine] countries recorded an increase in the volume of hours worked by self-employed persons with employees, with [] at the highest end ([] %) and [] at the lowest end ([] %). In contrast, during the second quarter of 2020, self-employed persons with employees were even more impacted than during the first, third and [fourth] quarter with Malta and Ireland being the most affected (-41.4 % and -38.0 %), while Denmark and Luxembourg were the least affected with a percentage change in the total volume of working hours of -1.6 % and 2.9 %. Self-employed with employees in Latvia were the only ones that experienced an increase in working hours with +11.0 %.
In regard to self-employed persons without employees, [] ([] %) had the largest decrease in the working hours, followed by [] ([] %), [] ([] %) and [] ([] %). By contrast, eleven countries recorded an increase in the total hours of work for self-employed persons without employees, [] corresponding to the biggest increase ([] %) and [] to the lowest one ([] %). Also this group were more largely impacted during the second quarter of 2020. Within is this group, self-employed persons without employees in Cyprus were mostly affected with a decrease in the total volume of working hours of -39.7 %. In Poland they experienced the lowest impact with -5.9 %.
In Q4 2020, employees encountered, relatively speaking, the smallest changes in working hours. Percentage changes ranged from [] % in [], [] % in [] and [] % in []to [] % in [], [] % in [], [] % in []and [] % in []. At EU level, the total volume of hours worked decreased by [] % between Q4 2019 and Q4 2020, which is six times less than for the second quarter (decrease of -13.4 % between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020). In addition, the hierarchy of countries changed between the second, third and fourth quarters.
Working hours broken down by occupation
In the third quarter, largest change for elementary occupations
Analysing the percentage change of the index between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2020 within group A of occupations, the volume of working hours (i.e. the index of working hours corrected for employment) appeared decreasing the most for managers and service and sales workers. In the EU-27, the volume of actual working hours for each of these two groups dropped by -7.7 %.
The impact on the volume of working hours for managers and service and sales workers was even more significant for the second quarter. Indeed, the percentage change of total working hours between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020 was equal to -15.9 % and -28.1 % respectively. More detailed information on the second quarter can be found here.
At country level, the largest decline in the hours of work for service and sales workers in the third quarter can be observed in Croatia and Luxembourg (-17.7 % and -17.5 % resp.). In contrast, service and sales workers in Denmark (+0.5 %) and Estonia (+1.5 %) saw their volume of hours of work increasing between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020 (see Figure 6).
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_ewhais)
Focusing on the group of managers, in the third quarter of 2020, a decrease in working hours was recorded in the majority of EU Member States, except in France, Greece, Cyprus, Austria, Slovenia, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia. In these countries, working hours increased with values ranging from +1.1 % in France and Greece to +11.2 % in Slovakia. Denmark was the country where managers faced the largest decrease in their working hours (-22.5 %), followed by Finland (-20.3 %) and Luxembourg (-18.9 %). In comparison with the second quarter (changes between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020), the corresponding percentage for Luxembourg was the complete opposite (with +10.9 %), whereas the percentages for Denmark and Finland were within a comparable range (-15.2 % and -16.3 % respectively).
The group of professionals and clerical support workers encountered an increase at EU level of +3.4 % and +1.6 % in their working hours in Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019. Regarding professionals, the majority of countries underwent an increase of their working hours with percentages respectively ranging from +0.2 %, +0.4 % and +0.8 % in Ireland, Cyprus and Poland to 14.5 % and 14.7 % in Portugal and Hungary. Only professionals in Spain, Austria, Sweden, Italy and Romania saw their working hours decreasing with changes ranging from -0.9 % (Spain) to -5.4 % (Romania). The percentage change of clerical support workers, on the other hand, were more equally distributed with percentages ranging from -18.8 % in Latvia to +10.3 % in Denmark.
For technicians and associate professionals, the percentage change for the index of working hours corrected for employment was -4.8 % for the EU-27 in the third quarter (between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020). The change in percentages ranged from -16.7 % in Malta and -11.1 % in Latvia to +9.9 % in Greece and +4.6 % in Belgium.
Focusing on group B, workers in elementary occupations (i.e. those involved in simple and routine tasks which may require the use of hand-held tools and considerable physical effort, like cleaners, agricultural workers and those employed in mining, construction and transport) had the largest decrease in their total working hours compared to all other occupations: -10.1 % at EU level (Q3 2020 compared with Q3 2019). The largest decrease in working hours for these occupations took place in Portugal and Sweden, with -29.6 % and -15.5 % respectively. By contrast, an increase in the index of total hours of work was found in Slovenia, Estonia and Slovakia, with +3.3 %, +0.6 % and +0.3 % respectively (see Figure 6). The percentage changes in the volume of working hours in the third quarter were significantly smaller than the corresponding ones in the second quarter. As an indication, the percentage change in the total working hours for the elementary occupations between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020 was equal to -25.8 % at EU level (while the change for Q3 was of -10.1 %, as mentioned here above). More information on the second quarter can be found here.
Plant and machine operators and assemblers (-6.5 %) and craft and related trades workers (-4.2 %) compile the second group of workers for whom working hours decreased the most between Q3 2019 and Q3 2020 at EU level. Among Member States, Ireland recorded the largest drop in the volume of working hours for plant and machine operators and assemblers (-18.6 %), and Sweden for craft and related trade workers (-7.8 %). By contrast, Luxembourg showed a large increase in the working hours for craft and related trade workers in the third quarter, with a change of +22.4 %. An increase of +3.4 % was recorded by Cyprus for the plant and machine operators and assemblers.
In the EU-27, skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers underwent a decrease in working hours of -1.8 % in the third quarter of 2020 (compared to the third quarter of 2019; corrected for employment). The percentage change in working hours at country level ranged from -29.1 % in Slovakia to +15.8 % in Sweden.
Finally, those in armed forces occupations were hit the least in their working hours: +1.0 % at EU level in Q3 2020. However, this type of occupation showed extreme values for the changes in volume of working hours (see Figure 6). The percentage change in the index of working hours (corrected for employment) ranged from +101.9 % in Austria to -27.3 % in Cyprus.
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
All figures in this article are based on detailed quarterly survey 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 EU-27 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 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 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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