Archive:Statistics on employment characteristics of households

Data extracted in July 2021.

Planned article update: August 2022.

Highlights

In 2020, all adults are employed in 57.5 % of the households

In the EU, 72.2 % of women aged 25 to 54 with children are employed against 90 % of men in 2020.

There are no employed adults in more than 1 in 5 households in Greece and Belgium in 2020, 21.7 % exactly in both countries.

IMAGE from NI

This article gives insight into the employment characteristics using household information. More statistics on this topic can be found in the Eurostat database under the section households statistics (see LFS series - specific topics). This article is also nicely complemented by some other articles based on the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), namely the articles Employment - annual statistics, Part-time and temporary employment - statistics, Unemployment statistics and beyond and Household composition statistics.

Full article

Overview of employment in EU households

In the EU, in almost 6 in 10 households, all adults living in the household are employed in 2020 (57.5 % of all private households) as it can be seen in Figure 1. Precisely, in 40.5 % of the households, all adults were working full time; in 17.0 %, at least one adult was working part-time and all other adults (if any) were working full time; in more than one quarter (26.4 %), at least one adult was working and one adult was not working and finally, in 16.1 % of the households, no adults were employed.

Note: For comparison purpose, the households composed solely of students or solely of people outside the labour force aged 65 and over were excluded.

Figure 1:Distribution of households by presence of children and working status, EU, 2010-2020
(% of total households)
Source: Eurostat (lfst_hhnhwhtc)

This picture differs when it considers the presence or not of children in the household. In 61.8 % of households with economically dependent children, all adults are employed against 54.9 % for households without children. These shares may be broken down as follows: all adults are working full-time in 39.0 % of households with children against 41.4 % in absence of children and, at least one adult was working part-time and all other adults (if any) were working full time in 22.8 % of households with children, that is significantly more than for households that do not include children i.e. 13.5 %. Furthermore, in 30.0 of households with children, at least one adult was working and one adult was not working but this share goes down to 24.2 % if only the households without children are taken into account. Finally, among households with children, 8.2 % do not count any employed adults while this share reached 20.9 % among households without children.

Comparing the situation in 2010 and in 2020 as displayed in Figure 1, it is clear that the share of households with all adults working increased significantly over the last decade: + 4.3 p.p. for households with all adults working full time and +1.4 p.p. for households with at least one adult working part time, all other adults (if any) working full time. Similar increases are observed regardless of the presence of children. However, larger differences are visible among households including at least one adult working and one adult not working: their share decreased by 5.0 p.p. among households with children but by 2.2 p.p. among households without children. Moreover, the households in which no adults are employed decreased less for households with children than for households without children (-0.7 p.p. against -3.6 p.p. respectively).

Among the EU Member States, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and Estonia had the highest shares of households in which all adults were working: in those countries, all adults were working in more than two thirds of the households. However, focusing solely on households in which all adults work full-time, Czechia ranked first with 59.3 % of the households followed by Estonia (56.4 %) and Lithuania (56.3 %). Croatia and Poland recorded the highest shares of households in which at least one adult was working and one adult was not working (46.2 % and 38.1 % respectively). By contrast, in 2020, Greece and Belgium had the highest percentage of households where no adults were working (21.7 % of all households) followed by Sweden (19.3 %), France (19.2 %), Italy (18.8 %), Spain (17.7 %) and Austria (17.0 %). Turkey showed also in 2020 a percentage above 20 % (also 21.7 %).

Figure 2:Distribution of households by working status and by country, 2020
(% of total households)
Source: Eurostat (lfst_hhnhwhtc)

Employment, education level and presence of children in the household: gender approach

It is largely assumed that whether or not a person has children present in the household affects the way he or she participates in the labour market, as well as the number of children and the age of the youngest child may influence furthermore the participation in the labour market. This section aims at bringing answers by showing the employment rate according to the different features of people aged 25-54: household composition, number of children and whether the youngest child is less than 6 years. These employment rates are provided as shown in Figure 3 for the total and by education level breakdowns.

Figure 3:Employment rate by type of household, presence and number of children, and age of the youngest, EU, 2020
(in % of the population aged 25 to 54)
Source: Eurostat (lfst_hheredty) and (lfst_hheredch)

Part-time employment for men and women, with and without children

Figures 2 and 3 show these effects for both the male and female population. Note that all results are limited to persons aged 25-49 years, so that different national situations for being a pupil, student and/or retired person do not influence the results and do not compromise the comparability between countries.

In 2019, 1 in 3 women (aged 25-49 years) with children worked on a part-time basis in the EU-27 (33.1 %). Figure 2 shows that the share of part-timers differs greatly between men and women and that the gender gap becomes even bigger when persons have children. In all countries, the proportion of women with one or more children that are employed on a part-time basis is higher compared to men. The gap between men and women with children for the part-time employment rate was 28.1 percentage points (p.p.) in the EU-27 in 2019. Concerning men and women without children, the gap was smaller (10.5 p.p.).

In Romania and North Macedonia, differences between men and women and between people with and without children, are rather small. In these two countries, the proportion of part-time workers is relatively low. In Denmark, Finland, Greece, Slovenia, Latvia, Portugal, Lithuania and Croatia, there are almost no differences in the share of part-time employment between women with or without children. However, the most common pattern is that having children does influence the part-time employment rate among women. For example, in Germany 24.0 % of women without children worked part-time in 2019 against 65.4 % of women with children, in Austria these rates were 27.3 % against 67.2 % and in the Netherlands 50.4 % against 83.0 % . This suggests that women in these countries tend to shift to part-time work from the moment they have children.

Figure 2: Gender gap in part-time employment by existence of children in the household, 2019 (% of employed aged 25-49 years) - Source: Eurostat (lfst_hhptechi)

Especially women with young children work part-time

The age of their youngest child further influences the proportion of women working part-time, as shown in Figure 3. In the EU-27, 36.5 % of women (aged 25-49 years) in employment and having one or more children, of which the youngest child is 5 years or younger, worked part-time in 2019. The corresponding figures for women where the youngest child is 6-11 years old and 12 years or older is 34.0 % and 27.4 % respectively. By contrast, the part-time employment rate of men (aged 25-49 years) having children is, relatively seen, not affected by the age of the youngest child: it nearly always stays below 10 % in all EU Member States. The only exception is in the Netherlands, where 16.6 % of men with a youngest child of 5 years or younger, 14.9 % of men with a youngest child aged 6-11 years and 14.2 % of men with a youngest child aged 12 years or older worked on a part-time basis.

Moreover, the higher the number of children in a household, the higher the part-time employment rate, both for men and women, especially where the youngest child is aged 11 years or younger.

Figure 3: Part-time employment by sex and age of the youngest child, 2019 (% of employed aged 25-49 years) - Source: Eurostat (lfst_hhptechi)

Source data for tables and graphs

Labour Market and Household Statistics 2019

Data sources

Source: All statistics presented in this article are derived from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). The EU-LFS is the largest European household sample survey providing quarterly and annual results on labour participation of people aged 15 and over. It covers residents in private households and excludes those in collective 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 the countries.

Under the specific topic 'Households statistics', the EU-LFS currently covers statistics on household composition and number and size of households.

Reference period: Yearly results are obtained as averages of the four quarters in the year.

Coverage: The results from the EU-LFS currently cover all European Union Member States, the United Kingdom, the EFTA Member States of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, as well as the candidate countries Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. For Cyprus, the survey covers only the areas of Cyprus controlled by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus. Nevertheless, EU-LFS household data are not available for Iceland, Norway, Switzerland.

Country codes: Belgium (BE), Bulgaria (BG), Czechia (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), Montenegro (ME), North Macedonia (MK), Serbia (RS) and Turkey (TR).

European aggregates: EU refers to the sum of EU-27 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.

•The distinction between full-time and part-time work is generally based on a spontaneous response by the respondent. The main exceptions are the Netherlands and Iceland where a 35 hours threshold is applied, Sweden where a threshold is applied to the self-employed, and Norway where persons working between 32 and 36 hours are asked whether this is a full- or part-time position;

•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.

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.