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Europäische Erhebungen über die Arbeitsbedingungen (EWCS)

Seit seiner Einführung im Jahr 1990 gibt die Europäische Erhebung über die Arbeitsbedingungen (EWCS) einen Überblick über die Arbeitsbedingungen in Europa.

European Working Conditions Survey 2024

Eurofound carried out the fieldwork for the latest edition of its European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) during 2024. The EWCS 2024 provides a comprehensive picture of the everyday reality of men and women at work. In order to future-proof this unique tool for European comparative analysis on working conditions and to look at how trend analysis could be maintained, in parallel to the face-to-face interviews for this survey edition, Eurofound also implemented an experiment for an online questionnaire for the first time.

The microdata for the EWCS 2024 will be available via the UK Data Service in late December 2025. Please refer to the Data availability page for more information on raw data access.

NEW - Fieldwork for the EWCS 2024 follow-up survey is underway and will run until 8 December 2025.

The 2024 edition of the survey provides data to be able to continue to:

  • assess and quantify working conditions of both employees and self-employed workers across the EU Member States and beyond on a harmonised basis

  • analyse relationships between different aspects of working conditions

  • identify work situations that are of concern and/or groups at risk, as well as monitoring areas of improvement

  • monitor trends by providing homogeneous indicators on these issues

  • contribute to European policy development, particularly on quality of work and employment

Analysis of the EWCS 2024 is still ongoing. In the meantime, Eurofound's first findings and podcast provide initial insights into the new edition of this survey.

Podcast Folge

30 June 2025

Episode 33Die Entwicklung der Arbeitsbedingungen in Europa
Diese Episode untersucht die sich wandelnde Landschaft der europäischen Arbeitsbedingungen, die sich an der Schnittstelle eines tiefgreifenden technologischen Wandels befinden. Mary McCaughey spricht mit Barbara Gerstenberger, Referatsleiterin für das Arbeitsleben bei Eurofound, die Erkenntnisse aus der 35-jährigen Geschichte der Europäischen Erhebung über die Arbeitsbedingungen (EWCS) nutzt. Diese Erhebungsreihe bietet eine detaillierte Perspektive auf die Längsschnittverschiebungen in der europäischen Arbeit. In der Diskussion wird untersucht, wie künstliche Intelligenz und Digitalisierung die Beschäftigung neu gestalten, wobei Parallelen zu historischen industriellen Veränderungen gezogen und gleichzeitig die kontinuierliche Anpassungsfähigkeit der Arbeitswelt anerkannt wird.

As the newest edition in Eurofound's longest-running survey, the EWCS 2024 aims to ensure continuity of the survey analysis, accurate and timely findings and high-quality outputs, as well as adaptability of data collection methods for the future.

  • Continuity of survey analysis: Comparative analysis, rich set of indicators, job quality at the heart, different working situations, quality of working lives

  • Quality of findings and outputs: Relevance to users, quality of the questionnaire and finalisation process, quality of the translation, quality of the survey production process

  • Adaptability of data collection: Comparability over time but also new questions dealing with 'the future of work that we want', findings solutions to collect high-quality comparative data on job quality in a changing data collection environment

The main emphasis of the preparatory work was on maintaining trends to ensure comparability over time in job quality and key indicators on quality of working life, incorporating gender mainstreaming. New questions have been developed to cover the key policy and research agenda around the future of work, including the impact of COVID-19, digitalisation and decarbonisation at work.

A study was commissioned on how to transition interviewer-administered, cross-national surveys to an online mode, with particular emphasis on the EWCS, and another on cognitive pretesting using cross-cultural interviews and web probing.

A comprehensive pilot test took place in all countries from September to November 2023 which provided valuable information to ensure the fieldwork implementation for the main survey is of the highest quality. Following the pilot test a small number of changes were made to the questionnaire and the online design was finalised, based on tests to assess the most appropriate methodological approach for the push-to-web survey.

The survey was carried out from February to November 2024.

Approximately 36,644 workers were interviewed in 35 countries, including the EU27, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Face-to-face interviewing in the respondents home or neutral location, not in the workplace.

49 language versions of the questionnaire are available.

To display this data, use the filters below to select a question. Refine the results by selecting a country (or group of countries), apply additional filters (which vary throughout the surveys) or change the visualisation by selecting a preferred chart type.

Dashboard

EWCS 2024 (all questions)

  • Update 2 December 2025: The EWCS 2024 dashboard is temporarily unavailable due to updates. Back online soon.

This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.

Methodology

Contractor

Verian, Belgium

Coverage

27 EU Member States, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland

Fieldwork period

February–November 2024 

Target population

All residents of the countries mentioned between above of 16-74 years of age and in employment at the time of the survey. People were considered to be in employment if they had worked for pay or profit for at least an hour in the week preceding the interview (ILO definition). 

Sample

Multi-stage, stratified, random samples of the working population in each country. Depending on the availability of high-quality registers, sampling was carried out using individual-level, household-level and address-level registers, or through enumeration using a random-walk approach. Country-level samples were stratified by region and degree of urbanisation. In each stratum, primary sampling units (PSUs) were randomly selected proportional to size. Subsequently, a random sample of households was drawn in each PSU. Finally, unless individual-level registers were used, in each household the selected respondent was the person in work who would have their birthday next. 

Sample size

The target sample was 1,000 interviews in all countries except Luxembourg (500), Cyprus, Malta and Kosovo (800). Slovenia (1,300) and Belgium (2,000) had a higher target since they topped up the base sample size at their own cost. The final number of valid interviews for the EWCS 2024 in all 35 countries is 36,644.

Type

Face to face, at the respondent’s home using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI); median interview duration 42 minutes. 

Quality assurance

Respondents were interviewed in the national language(s) of their country. Overall 49 language versions were used. 

The English source questionnaire is available.

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The language versions of the questionnaire are made available to researchers for background information. Note that there may be some very small discrepancies between the language version and the English source version due to last-minute scripting adjustments prior to fieldwork which are not reflected in the Excel version. If any anomalies are identified the source version should be considered the reference. Eurofound would be grateful to be informed of any issues arising in the translations.

Download the questionnaire in the language of each country below.

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Eurofound experts

You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.

Agnès Parent-Thirion

Senior research manager
Working life research

Agnès Parent-Thirion ist leitende Forschungsmanagerin im Referat Arbeitsleben bei Eurofound und mit der Planung, Entwicklung und Durchführung von Forschungsprojekten zu den Arbeitsbedingungen beauftragt, insbesondere der Europäischen Erhebung über die Arbeitsbedingungen (EWCS) und ihren Analysen. Sie ist verantwortlich für die außerordentliche Ausgabe des EWCS 2021 und für die Erstellung des Fragebogens für den EWCS 2024. Ihre Forschungsinteressen umfassen Arbeitsbedingungen, Arbeitsplatzqualität, das Monitoring von Arbeitsbedingungen, Arbeitsorganisation, Gender, die Zukunft von Arbeit und Zeit. Sie arbeitet seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt auf dem Gebiet der europäischen Vergleichserhebungen in allen Aspekten, einschließlich Design, Fragebogenentwicklung, Feldforschung, Qualitätskontrolle und Analyse. Sie hat einen Abschluss in Wirtschaft und Management von den Universitäten Paris IX Dauphine und Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne und ein Postgraduate Diploma in Statistik vom Trinity College Dublin. Kürzlich hat sie Online-Kurse zu Künstlicher Intelligenz: Inquiry-driven Leadership mit dem MIT Sloan Executive Education und "Les grand enjeux de la transition: re-ouvrir l'horizon, comprendre pour agir" mit dem Campus de la Transition absolviert. Bevor sie zu Eurofound kam, war sie mehrere Jahre in der Europäischen Kommission tätig.

Sophia MacGoris

Surveys officer
Working life research

Sophia MacGoris ist Referentin für Erhebungen im Referat Arbeitsleben bei Eurofound. Sie arbeitet an allen drei Erhebungen von Eurofound. Da sie seit vielen Jahren an länderübergreifenden Erhebungen beteiligt ist, nutzt sie ihre Erfahrung und ihre Querschnittsfunktion, um eine Kontinuität des Lernens und die Qualitätssicherung auf höchstem Niveau während des gesamten Erhebungsprozesses zu gewährleisten. Bevor sie 1996 zu Eurofound kam, arbeitete sie mehrere Jahre bei der Europäischen Kommission in Brüssel im Bereich Wissenschaft, Forschung und Entwicklung. Sie hat einen Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Sozialwissenschaften mit Spezialisierung auf Sozialpolitik.

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European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
The tripartite EU agency providing knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies