Living and working in Europe 2022 covers a wide range of topics, from employment trends, work patterns, quality of life and well-being in the aftermath of the COVID-19 to the long-term issues of job quality, strengthening social dialogue and trust in institutions. It also highlights the connections between Eurofound’s work and EU policy priorities around the green and digital transitions, the response to the war in Ukraine, upward convergence and the future of Europe.
In this light, the yearbook puts the spotlight on a number of important research areas.
Employment
EU labour markets performed well in 2022 – the payback for government interventions in 2020 and 2021, many EU-backed, to protect employment through the tumultuous previous two years. Even the war in Ukraine did not arrest the momentum of an economy released from a lengthy stasis, which hired strongly, especially in the first half of the year. The strength of the employment recovery is replicated in the data on announced job losses and job creation over the year and recorded in Eurofound’s European Restructuring Monitor (ERM). Despite the robust job gains across sectors, however, some businesses were exposed to the fallout of the war in Ukraine and compelled to axe jobs.
Research focuses on:
- The changing structure of employment in the EU over the pandemic period, with growth in higher-paying employment and decline in lower-paying employment
- Differences in employment trends for women and men
- Growing labour shortages in certain sectors
- The balance of job losses and job gains arising from restructurings across the EU, as recorded in the ERM
- Restructuring in retail banking as an exemplar of the impact of digitalisation on employment
Social dialogue
The implementation of minimum wages by the Member States and the progressive increase in their value relative to other wages are steps towards a more equal society, where workers’ pay meets their material needs. With nearly 1 in 10 workers at risk of poverty, however, Europe is still some way from achieving that goal. The European Pillar of Social Rights commits the EU to ensuring that every worker has a wage that secures a decent standard of living, and the Minimum Wage Directive adopted in October 2022 follows through on that commitment. A second objective of the directive is to strengthen collective bargaining. As the year progressed, the climate of rising inflation and its impact on low-wage earners saw Eurofound’s work on the minimum wage and collective bargaining generate significant interest.
Research focuses on:
- The 2022 annual review of minimum wages in the EU
- Ensuring adequate minimum wages in an age of inflation
- Stronger collective bargaining for better social and employment outcomes
- Emerging practices and provisions in collective bargaining
- Collective bargaining and social dialogue, with a focus also on two sectors: hospitals and civil aviation
- Quality and intensity of social partner involvement in the drawing up of national recovery and resilience plans
Working conditions
A scarcity of workers to fill job vacancies was commonplace across the economy in 2022. Hospitality businesses struggled to lure staff back after a long period of closures and restrictions. Workers cited poor working conditions as the reason for their reluctance to return and were instead opting for job quality. Employers will have to work harder on improving job quality to retain experienced and trained staff and to attract new staff. Eurofound investigated the job quality of Europeans in its European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, whose findings were published in November 2022.
The introduction of technology in workplaces has long played a part in improving job quality, reducing the physical toll of work on workers and the risk of accident and injury, for instance. Digitalisation also has the potential to enhance job quality, but it could well do the opposite, deskilling, reducing autonomy and increasing intensity, depending on how companies choose to implement the new digital technologies. Telework is one product of digitalisation that has opened up new frontiers in the working lives of white-collar workers.
Research focuses on:
- Working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications for the future
- The importance of job quality, according to the findings of the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey 2021
- The ethical implications of the use of digital technologies in the workplace and the impact of these technologies on working conditions
- Regulating platform work
- The rise in telework and the impact on working conditions; regulation of telework, including the right to disconnect, in the Member States
- Working time and work–life balance, and the gender dimension of these aspects of working life
Living conditions and quality of life
The year 2022 opened with the general expectation that COVID-19 was in retreat. Workers could return to their workplaces, students to education, children to childcare and citizens to normal life. The tentative rebound in Europeans’ sense of well-being was dealt a blow, however, when Russia invaded Ukraine, with consequences for everyone across the continent, both personal and economic. Three-quarters of respondents to the fifth round of Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey said they were very concerned about the war in Ukraine. This survey round, which ran from March to May 2022, is testimony to how far Europeans were from regaining the financial and personal well-being they had enjoyed before the pandemic.
Research focuses on:
- Living and working in a new era of uncertainty, as captured in the fifth round of Eurofound’s e-survey
- Mental well-being among different groups, particularly young people in light of the European Year of Youth 2022
- The gender divide at work and home during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Experiences of people with disabilities during the pandemic
- Energy poverty and cost of living increases, and the resulting impact on living standards
- Citizens’ trust in national institutions and in the EU
Eurofound's solidarity with Ukraine
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 shocked Europe. The significance of this act of aggression and its impact throughout the 27 Member States spurred Eurofound to find ways within its remit to gather evidence and make information available on how people and policymakers across Europe reacted and responded to the crisis as the year progressed. A new module was added to the scheduled fifth round of the Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, fielded in March–May, to capture Europeans’ reactions to the war and to gauge their support for the EU’s response. The scope of the EU PolicyWatch database was also broadened to record the policy measures adopted by governments and the EU in response to the war.
Eurofound in 2023
Two years of the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the Russian attack on Ukraine have absorbed much of the policy bandwidth in the EU, but the projects to ensure a just transition to a green and digital economy and to implement the European Pillar of Social Rights remain at the top of the policy agenda.
Eurofound’s work programme for 2023, which operates within its multiannual work programme for 2021–2024, titled ‘Towards recovery and resilience’, is informed by the challenges to social cohesion and just transitions in an environment shaped by the impact of the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis.
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