Archive:Employment in detail - quarterly statistics

Data extracted in November 2021

Planned article update: 1 March 2022

Highlights

At EU level, 13 % of employed people aged 20-64 were self-employed during the second quarter of 2021. This share was 17 % among people aged 55-64.

The number of self-employed people increased by 28 % from the first to the second quarter of 2021 in the travel agency, tour operator reservation service and related activities sector, as well as in the accommodation sector.

In the second quarter of 2021, in the EU, more than two thirds of self-employed people were own-account workers (69 %); the remaining third were employers (31 %).

Less than one in ten employed people in Germany, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Bulgaria and Cyprus were self-employed in the second quarter of 2021.

Employed people by main characteristics and professional status, EU, Q2 2021
(in % of employed people, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_egaps) and special extraction

In the first two quarters of 2021, the health measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic were progressively lifted and the economy started its recovery phase. At the same time, many EU governments announced the upcoming partial or complete cancellation of the short time working arrangements or other financial support aimed at mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment.

In light of this situation, this article looks at the recent development of the number of employed people, with a distinction between employees and self-employed people to identify the consequences of the crisis on employment and of the halt in the financial support provided to the enterprises. It also provides an overview of the employed people by professional status across the EU Member States. Furthermore, this article explores the sectors of economic activity and groups of occupations with the largest presence of self-employed people and those registering the highest quarter-on-quarter increases.

The present article complements the article on employment. Both articles use the quarterly results of the European Union Labour Force Survey (LFS) and are part of the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Note: Given the level of detail, the data used in this article are not seasonally adjusted. Please note that figures given 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

Employees and self-employed people: country profiles

In the second quarter of 2021, the vast majority of people in employment in the EU aged 20-64 were employees, accounting for 86.2 % (see Figure 1). The highest share of employees among the total number of employed people can be found in Germany with 92.4 %, followed by Denmark (91.8 %), Sweden (91.4 %) and Luxembourg (91.2 %). The lowest shares of employees were reported in Greece (68.9 %) and Italy (79.3 %), where less than eight out of ten employed people were employees.

The remaining employed people are mainly self-employed. At EU level, 13.2 % of employed people were self-employed. Greece (28.2 % of self-employed in total employment), Italy (19.8 %), Poland (17.9 %) and the Netherlands (15.3 %) recorded the highest shares of self-employment in the second quarter of 2021. By contrast, less than one in ten employed persons were self-employed in Germany (7.4 %), Luxembourg (7.6 %), Denmark (8.0 %), Sweden (8.5 %), Bulgaria (9.9 %) and Cyprus (10.0 %, a slightly upwards rounded value). Self-employed persons can be divided into two categories, i.e. the self-employed persons with employees (employers) and the self-employed persons without employees (own-account workers). In the EU, more than two thirds of self-employed persons (68.9 %) were own-account workers while 31.1 % were employers. In Croatia, Germany, Luxembourg, Estonia, Denmark, Latvia, Austria and France, more than two in five self-employed persons had employees while in Romania, Lithuania, Cyprus, Czechia and Slovakia, they accounted for less than one in five self-employed persons.

The last category of employed people consists of contributing family workers. This professional status is relatively marginal at EU level (0.6 %) and in the overwhelming majority of EU Member States. However, in two EU countries, contributing family workers accounted for more than 2 % of total employment in the second quarter of 2021, namely Greece (2.9 %) and Romania (2.8 %).

Figure 1: Share of employed people by professional status and by country, Q2 2021
(in % of total employed people aged 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_egaps)

Looking at the evolution between the first and the second quarter of 2021, the change in the number of employees varied between -2.1 % in Estonia and +9.2 % in Greece. Substantial increases in the number of employees were also recorded in Ireland (+4.1 %) and Slovenia (+4.0 %), as shown in Figure 2.

Self-employed people, on the other hand, appeared to have relatively high volatility over the same period. The number of self-employed persons changed by more than 4 % in eleven countries. The largest increases in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first one were observed in Romania (+17.2 %), Croatia (+11.7 %), Slovenia (+9.8 %) and Ireland (+8.1 %) and the sharpest decreases in Luxembourg (-10.9 %) and in Malta (-4.9 %). Please note that the high volatility in the number of self-employed might be due to a low number of people in this category in some countries, particularly in small countries, which might emphasize the changes. No specific differences based on the type of self-employment could be highlighted across the EU as regards the development between the first and the second quarter, as there was a higher increase or a lower decrease for self-employed people without employees than for self-employed with employees in 14 out of 27 EU Member States.

Figure 2: Development in the number of employees and self-employed by country, Q2 2021 compared to Q1 2021 (in %, people aged 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_egaps)

Figure 3 shows that, in the EU during the second quarter of 2021, employed men were more likely to be self-employed than employed women: 16.5 % of employed men were self-employed against 9.3 % for women. The same pattern is observed among all Member States but to a different extent. The largest differences among the shares of self-employed men and women were found in Greece (12.4 percentage points (p.p.)), Slovakia (11.8 p.p.), Malta (11.4 p.p.) and Poland (10.3 p.p.). Considering the subcategories of self employment, i.e. those with employees (employers) and those without employees (own-account workers), 74.4 % of self-employed women were own-account workers against 66.3 % of self-employed men. However, one third of self-employed men and one quarter of self-employed women were employers.

Figure 3: Share of self-employed people with and without employees by sex and country, Q2 2021
(in % of total employed people aged 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_egaps)

Snapshot on self-employment

More than 1 in 5 employed men aged 55-64 is self-employed

As already stated in the previous section of this article, self-employment is clearly more common among employed men than among employed women. This can be observed for every age group and educational attainment level (see Figure 4). Furthermore, there are more self-employed among employed people aged 55 to 64 compared to the other age groups (15-24 and 25-54). In fact, in the second quarter of 2021, at EU level, 22.5 % of employed men aged 55-64 were self-employed against 15.9 % of employed men aged 25-54 and 5.0 % aged 15-24. Among employed women aged 55-64, 11.0 % were self-employed against the 9.4 % aged 25-54 and the 2.9 % aged 15-24. This pattern was observed for the total employment but also for each specific category of educational attainment level.

Differences in the professional status of employed people between the three levels of education i.e. low, medium and high level of educational attainment, are smaller than the ones observed for the age or gender groups. Nonetheless, self-employment appears to be slightly more frequent among employed people with a low educational attainment level (15.8 % against 12.4 % for employed people with a medium level and 13.1 % for employed people with a high level) (see the figure on the top of the article). Overall, considering people of the same age and sex, the gaps between the shares of self-employed people in different educational attainment levels are always lower than 4 p.p. The only exception is for employed men aged 55-64, who had a larger gap between the representatives with a medium level of education compared to the ones with a high or low level of education which showed a significantly higher share of self-employment.

Nevertheless, it also appears that the prevalence of being employers or own-account workers significantly differs from a category of education to another: 43.2 % of self-employed men aged 55-64 with a high level of education were employers against 35.9 % for self-employed men with a medium level of education and 30.2 % for self-employed men with a low level of education. The same finding for self-employed women aged 55-64 and men aged 25-54: the higher the educational attainment level, the higher the share of employers among self-employed people. The contrary was found for women aged 25-54 as more self-employed women were employers with a low level of education (26.3 %) than those with a medium level (25.4 %) or with a high level of education (24.6 %).

Moreover, the share of women with a low level of education and contributing as family workers was higher than for men with a low level of education. Finally, the higher the level of educational attainment, the lower the share of contributing family workers.

Figure 4: Employed people by sex, level of education, age and professional status, EU, Q2 2021
(in % of employed people, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

Focus on sectors of activities and occupations

More than 15 % increase for accommodation and activities related to travel agency or tour operator, both for employees and self-employed persons

According to the most recent LFS data released, more than half of employed people in the EU were self-employed in the NACE sector of "other professional, scientific and technical activities" (57.1 %), including e.g. specialised design, photographic and translation and interpretation activities, as well as in the sector of crop and animal production, hunting and related service activities (54.3 %), as shown in Figure 5. The sectors of creative, arts and entertainment activities, other personal service activities and repair of computers and personal and household goods follow with more than two in five employed people being self-employed. Note that NACE divisions not fulfilling the data reliability and confidentiality criteria for the employees and self-employed categories are excluded from this analysis. For the same reasons, if the distinction of self-employed with and without employees is not possible, only the total category of self-employed is shown.

Figure 5: Sectors of activity (NACE 2 divisions) for which more than 25 % of employed people are self-employed, EU, Q2 2021
(in % of total employed people, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

The increases of more than 4 % between the first and the second quarter of 2021 are displayed in Figure 5 for both employees and self-employed persons. With respect to employees, the highest quarter-on-quarter increases were registered by the sector of accommodation (+ 19.6 %), gambling and betting activities (+18.1 %) and travel agency, tour operator and other reservation service and related activities (+17.8 %). As for self-employed persons, increases by more than 15 % were found in the following sectors: travel agency, tour operator and other reservation service and related activities (+28.2 %), accommodation (+27.8 %), manufacture of machinery and equipment n.e.c. (+26.7 %), rental and leasing activities (+20.2 %), sports activities and amusement and recreation activities (+19.4 %), creative, arts and entertainment activities (+19.0 %), publishing activities (+18.8 %) and food and beverage service activities (+15.9 %).

Figure 6: Largest increases in the number of employees and self-employed persons by sector of activity (NACE 2 divisions), Q2 2021 compared to Q1 2021
(in %, people 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

Quarter-on-quarter increase of 11 % for employees as food preparation assistants

In the EU, self-employment is the professional status of more than half of street and related sales and service workers (68.1 %), skilled agricultural workers (65.6 %) and hospitality, retail and other services managers e.g. hotel and restaurant managers and retail and wholesale trade managers (59.4 %). These occupational categories included the highest shares of self-employed persons in the second quarter of 2021 as shown in Figure 7. Skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers, and chief executives, senior officials and legislators stood also out with a relatively high share of self-employed persons in the EU of around one third. Differences are also noticeable in the type of self-employment for these groups of occupations: it can clearly be seen that most chief executives, senior officials and legislators (82.2 %), production and specialised services managers (76.4 %) and hospitality, retail and other services managers (72.3 %) were employers while this was the case of less than one fifth of the skilled agricultural workers and the legal, social and cultural professionals (i.e. legal, social and religious associate professionals; sports and fitness workers; and, artistic, cultural and culinary associate professionals). Note that ISCO sub-major groups not fulfilling the data reliability and confidentiality criteria for the employees and self-employed categories are excluded from this analysis. For the same reasons, if the distinction of self-employed with and without employees is not possible, only the total category of self-employed is shown.

Figure 7: Occupational categories (ISCO sub-major groups) for which more than 25 % of employed people are self-employed, EU, Q2 2021
(in % of total employed people, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

Among employees, the largest increases from the first to the second quarter of 2021 were registered by food preparation assistants (+10.7 %); the craft and related trades workers (+8.3 %); the skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (+7.7 %); the skilled agricultural workers (+7.6 %) and the personal service workers (+7.2 %), all these categories exceeding a 7 % increase (see Figure 8). As for self-employed persons, such increases (higher than 7 %) were recorded for the general and keyboard clerks (+21.8 %); the customer services clerks (+15.3 %); the legal, social, cultural and related associate professionals (14.0 %); the information and communication technicians (+12.0 %); the skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers (+9.6 %); the personal service workers (+8.7 %), the cleaners and helpers (+7.9 %) and the electrical and electronic trades workers (+7.2 %).

Figure 8: Largest increases in the number of employees and self-employed persons by occupational category (ISCO sub-major groups), Q2 2021 compared to Q1 2021
(in %, people 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

Second job as self-employed person or employee

Across the EU, 3.8 % of employed people had a second job in the second quarter of 2021. While this share was higher in the Netherlands (9.6 %) and in Finland and Denmark (both with 7.3 %), 0.5 % or less of employed people had a second job in Bulgaria (0.4 %), Romania and Sweden (both 0.5 %). At EU level, 57.2 % of those having a second job were employees in their second job, while 39.2 % were self-employed. Based on countries for which data is available, the prevalence of either status in second jobs differs across EU Member States (see Figure 9). In Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and Estonia, more than two thirds of those having a second job were employees in their second job while this share accounted for less than one third in Latvia, Luxembourg and Poland. In Slovenia, Latvia, Belgium, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Greece, more than half of those having a second job were self-employed in their second job.

Figure 9: Employed people having a second job by professional status of the second job and country, Q2 2021
(in % of employed people aged 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat special extraction

People being professionals in their first job were those with the highest share of employed people having a second job (5.1 %) during the second quarter of 2021. This category encompasses people working as professionals in various domains: science and engineering, health, teaching, business and administration, information and communications technology and finally, in legal, social and cultural fields, and generally with a high skill level (for further information see the ISCO-08 structure). Slightly more than half of employed professionals having a second job were employees in their second job (2.7 % of total employed professionals), while most the remaining part carried out their second job mainly as a self-employed person (2.3 %). It is also worth noting that 4.7 % of people with elementary occupations had also a second job, being the second occupational category with the highest frequency of people having a second job. Elementary occupations involve the performance of simple and routine tasks which may require the use of hand-held tools and considerable physical effort. Workers in elementary occupations include people employed as cleaners and helpers; agricultural, forestry and fishery workers; those employed in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport; food preparation assistants; street and related sales and services workers or refuse workers. More than 8 in 10 employed people in elementary occupations having a second job were employees in their second job (81.6 %) while 15.7 % were self-employed (see Figure 10).

Figure 10: Employed people having a second job by occupation in the first job and professional status in the second job, Q2 2021
(in % of employed people aged 20-64, not seasonally adjusted data)
Source: Eurostat (lfsq_e2gis) and special extraction

Source data for tables and graphs

Employment (in detail) Q2 2021: tables and figures

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 the 27 EU Member States.

Country note:

Germany: In 2021 Q1 only, data of one federal region, Bremen, is not included in the estimates, but national estimates are reweighted to respect population margins.
Spain and France have assessed the attachment to the job and included in employment those who have an unknown duration of absence but expect to return to the same job once the COVID-19 measures in place are lifted.

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

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

The low educational attainment level refers to the attainment of lower secondary education, at most. The medium educational attainment level corresponds to at most upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education and the high level of educational attainment level to the attainment of tertiary education.

Context

The COVID-19 pandemic hit Europe in January and February 2020, with the first cases confirmed in Spain, France and Italy. To fight the pandemic, EU Member States have taken a wide variety of measures. From the second week of March 2020, most countries closed retail shops, with the exception of supermarkets, pharmacies and banks. Bars, restaurants and hotels were also closed. In Italy and Spain, non-essential production was stopped and several countries imposed regional or even national lock-down measures which further stifled 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 over 50) banned in most EU Member States.

The majority of the preventive measures were initially introduced during mid-March 2020. Consequently, the first quarter of 2020 was the first quarter in which the labour market across the EU was affected by COVID-19 measures taken by Member States.

In the following quarters of 2020, as well as 2021, the preventive measures against the pandemic were continuously lightened and re-enforced in accordance with the number of new cases of the disease. New waves of the pandemic began to appear regularly (e.g. peaks in October-November 2020 and March-April 2021). Furthermore, new strains of the virus with increased transmissibility emerged in late 2020, which additionally alarmed the health authorities. Nonetheless, as massive vaccination campaigns started all around the world in 2021, people began to anticipate improvement of the situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.

The quarterly data on employment allows to regularly report on the impact of the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic on employment. This specific article depicts employment in general and specifically by gender, age and level of educational attainment. Another article focuses on the employed people and job starters by sector of economic activity and occupation.

Please note that in this exceptional context of the COVID-19 pandemic, employment and unemployment as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) are not sufficient to describe the developments taking place in the labour market. In the first phase of the crisis, active measures to contain employment losses led to absences from work rather than dismissals, and individuals could not look for work or were not available due to the containment measures, thus not counting as unemployed. Only referring to unemployment might consequently underestimate the entire unmet demand for employment, also called the labour market slack, which is further analysed, with namely the evolution of the total volume of working hours, in the publication Labour market in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.