Cyprus was among the three EU countries with the largest shares of underemployment and part-time workers, along with Greece and Spain, in 2015, according to Eurostat’s labor survey.
In 2015, the proportion of underemployed part-time workers among total part-time workers varied significantly across the EU member states, Eurostat data showed on Thursday. A majority of part-time workers aged 15 to 74 wished to work more hours while being available to do so in Greece (71.8 percent), Cyprus (68 percent) and Spain (54.2 percent), closely followed by Portugal (46.4 percent). At the opposite end of the scale, Denmark (9.5 percent), the Czech Republic (9.6 percent), Estonia (12 percent), Luxembourg (13.2 percent), the Netherlands (13.4 percent) and Germany (14 percent) registered the smallest shares of underemployed part-time workers. At EU level, 22.4 percent of persons working part-time were underemployed in 2015. It should be noted that underemployed part-time workers were predominantly women in every EU member state except Romania.
In total, among the population aged 15 to 74 in the European Union (EU), 220 million were employed, 23 million were unemployed and 136 million were economically inactive in 2015. Around 8 in every 10 persons employed in the EU were working full time and 2 in 10 part-time. Among these 44.7 million persons in the EU working part-time in 2015, 10 million were under-employed, meaning they wished to work more hours and were available to do so. This corresponds to more than a fifth (22.4 percent) of all part-time workers and 4.6 percent of total employment in the EU in 2015. Two thirds of these underemployed part-time workers were women (66 percent). Alongside the economically active population (employed and unemployed), 11.4 million economically inactive persons aged 15-74 in the EU had in 2015 a certain attachment to the labor market and could be considered as a potential additional labor force, equivalent to 4.7 percent of the EU labor force. Among them, around 9.3 million were available to work but not seeking, such as discouraged job seekers, and almost 2.2 million seeking work but not immediately available, for example students seeking a job to start after graduation. The majority of this potential additional labor force in the EU in 2015 was also women (56.7 percent).
According to Eurostat, the potential additional labor force also varied significantly between member states, with the largest proportion registered by far in Italy (with more than 3.5 million persons, equivalent to 14 percent of the labor force), ahead of Croatia (9.2 percent), Luxembourg (7.8 percent), Finland (7.7 percent) and Bulgaria (7.1 percent). It should be noted that in every EU member state, the potential labor force consisted mainly of persons available to work but not seeking.
Women made up the largest part of the total potential additional labor force in a vast majority of EU member states, with the exceptions of Ireland, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Denmark, Finland, Hungary and Austria. At the EU level, the potential additional labor force, made up of 57 percent women, was equivalent to 4.7 percent of the total labor force.
Source: CNA
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