More Europeans working part-time

More Europeans are working part-time, according to European Commission findings that monitor trends over an eight-year period. The increase is due to involuntary part-time work, i.e. where staff take up part-time work on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, and it is a formula that is particularly on the rise in southern countries.

The Commission finds that:

• the percentage of the workforce in involuntary part-time work in 2015 was 72.9% in Greece, 69.4% in Cyprus, 65.5% in Italy and 63.7% in Spain. The strongest increase over the period took place in Ireland, from 11.5% in 2007 to 39.2% in 2015. The EU average of involuntary part-time workers in the workforce increased from 23.1% in 2007 to 29.9% in 2015.
• regarding part-time work more generally, the gender gap is acute. The figures show that far more women (32.1%) than men (8.9%) work on a part-time basis.

Working part-time often implies a job of lower quality, lower hourly wages, poor training, poor career opportunities and, in the long run, reduced pension entitlements.

The Netherlands is an outstanding case, where three quarters of women and one fifth of men work part-time. Surprisingly though, the country has the lowest share of involuntary part-time workers, so the disproportion is probably due to ‘reconciliation difficulties’, i.e. the difficulty of reconciling a standard job with one’s private life and family responsibilities.