Over the last 17 years, temporary employment in the EU has fluctuated between 12.6% of total employees in the first quarter of 2003 to 13.6% in the second quarter of 2019, with a peak in the fourth quarter of 2006 (14.7%).
26 million employees aged 15 to 64 had a temporary employment contract in the EU in Q2 2019, representing 13.6% of total employees. Temporary employment was more common among female (14.2%) than male employees (13.2%).
Highest share of employees with a temporary contract in Spain, lowest in Romania and Lithuania
Over one in four employees in Spain (26.4%) and more than one in five in Poland (22.2%), Portugal (21.0%) and the Netherlands (20.5%) had a temporary contract in the second quarter of 2019.
Temporary employees accounted for less than 2% of all employees in Romania and Lithuania (both 1.5%). Low shares were also recorded in Latvia (3.1%), Estonia (3.4%), Bulgaria (4.1%) and the United Kingdom (5.1%).
Young people held by far the highest share of temporary contracts
In the EU, in the second quarter of 2019, nearly 8 million young people or almost half (42.8%) of employees aged 15 to 24 were employed under a temporary contract compared with 11.6% of employees aged 25 to 54 and 6.5% of those aged 55 to 64.
The source data are accessible in Eurostat table lfsi_pt_q.
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