Since the first quarter of 2020, the labour market has been affected by measures taken by EU Member States to limit the spread of COVID-19. Some of these measures, had either a direct or indirect effect on the number of working hours of employed people.
In the EU, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the index of total actual hours worked in the main job (computed using the year 2006 as the reference with an index of 100 points) dropped to 96.8 index points from 101.8 index points a year earlier. This corresponds to a fall of -5.0 index points. A more significant decline was observed in the second quarter of 2020, when the index slumped to the lowest level of 85.9 index points (a total decline of -15.9 index points) before rising again the next quarter.
Examining the gender difference over the same period, the decline in total actual hours worked in the main job was even more important for women than for men; total actual hours worked in the main job fell by -6.1 index points for women, whereas the amount of hours fell by -4.3 index points for men. Moreover, the index of total working time for women registered a bigger fall than for men between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020 (-18.5 points versus -14.3 points) as well as between the third and the fourth quarter of 2020 (-1.7 points versus 0.2 points).
Source dataset: lfsi_ahw_q
Among the different occupation groups, the service and sales workers experienced the largest declines in the number of working hours in all four quarters of 2020 (when compared to the same quarter in 2019). Specifically, at the EU-level, the working hours of workers in this occupation group fell by -8.5% in the first quarter of 2020 (when compared with the same quarter of 2019), -28.7% in the second quarter, -7.7% and -16.2% in the third and fourth quarters respectively.
Source dataset: lfsq_ewhais
At the country level, all EU Member States experienced declines in the number of working hours for service and sales workers in the four quarter of 2020 when compared with the same quarter of the previous year. The only exceptions were Luxembourg and Romania, where there was a reported increase in the first quarter of 2020 (+7.8% and +2.1% respectively), as well as Demark and Estonia, which reported increases of +0.5% and +1.5% respectively in the third quarter.
For more information:
- Eurostat website section dedicated to EU Labour Force Survey
- Eurostat database of EU Labour Force Survey
- Statistics explained articles Hours of work in detail - quarterly statistics and Hours of work - quarterly statistics.
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