• Areas of Expertise:
  • Business and society
  • Diversity
  • Employment status
  • Gender
  • Health
  • Human capital
  • Industrial change
  • Industrial relations
  • Labour market
  • Participation at work
  • Population and society
  • Quality of life
  • Quality of work
  • Social cohesion
  • Social protection
  • Time
  • Work-life balance
  • Work organisation

Employment status

Overview

The Foundation has identified employment status as one of the major factors influencing quality of work. In today's labour market, with unemployment still a major issue in many countries, there is a trend towards greater flexibility in contract relationships. This makes part-time work, fixed-term work and temporary agency work more commonplace, alongside traditional full-time jobs. Posted workers and their working conditions are increasingly under debate.

The European Working Conditions Surveys (most recently in 2010) looks at the employment status of workers throughout Europe. Data on employment status, including trends over time, is available in the Survey Mapping Tool.

The Foundation's research and surveys highlight a strong correlation between temporary employment and poor working conditions as well as poorer health in general. All other things being equal, it can be said that precarious employment status is an aggravating factor. Six years after the first proposal in March 2002, the Directive 2008/104/EC on temporary agency work eventually entered into force on 5 December 2008, and was to be implemented into national laws by 5/12/2011.