Romania has smallest share of temporary employees in the EU

Romanian and Lithuania have the smallest share of temporary employees in the European Union, data released by Eurostat shows. Overall 27 million employees aged 15 to 64 in the EU, representing 14.3 percent of all employees in the bloc, had a temporary contract in 2017. 

In 2017, the share was slightly higher for women (14.8 percent) than for men (13.8 percent). It was also higher in the euro area (16.0 percent) than in the rest of the bloc.

When it comes to the use of temporary work contracts across the EU Member States and between age groups, there are several discrepancies.

The highest share of employees with a temporary contract are found in Spain and in Poland, while the lowest are in Romania and Lithuania.

According to Eurostat, over one in four employees in Spain (26.8 percent) and Poland (26.1 percent), and more than one in five in Portugal (22.0 percent), the Netherlands (21.5 percent) and Croatia (20.6 percent) had a temporary contract in 2017.

At the opposite end, temporary employees accounted for less than 2 percent of all employees in both Romania (1.2 percent) and Lithuania (1.7 percent). Low shares were also recorded in Latvia (3.0 percent), Estonia (3.1 percent), Bulgaria (4.4 percent), Malta and the United Kingdom (both 5.6 percent).

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Young employees are the most likely category to receive temporary contracts.  Last year in the EU, nearly 8 million young people, or almost half (43.9 percent) of employees aged 15 to 24, were employed under a temporary contract. Across the bloc, more than seven in ten young employees had a temporary contract in Spain (73.3 percent) and Slovenia (71.6 percent).

In Poland, around two-thirds of them had such contracts (68.2 percent) and Portugal (65.9 percent), while about six in ten had temporary contracts in Italy (61.9 percent), Croatia (60.8 percent) and France (58.0 percent).

In contrast, the share of young people working under a temporary contract was less than 10 percent in Romania (4.1 percent), Latvia (6.7 percent) and Lithuania (6.8 percent). It was also below 20 percent in Estonia (10.6 percent), Bulgaria (12.7 percent), Malta (13.0 percent), the United Kingdom (14.5 percent) and Hungary (17.6 percent).