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Non-standard employment

Non-standard employment is an umbrella term for different employment arrangements that deviate from standard employment. They include temporary employment; part-time and on-call work; temporary agency work and other multiparty employment relationships; as well as disguised employment and dependent self-employment. The most relevant of possible future developments of non-standard work, whatever their contractual form, are related to digitalisation.

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Workers on non-permanent contracts and workers with no formal contract are less satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country, as are workers experiencing job insecurity. They are less...

1 Septiembre 2023
Corporate news

Eurofound expert(s)

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Carlos Vacas Soriano is a research manager in the Employment unit at Eurofound. He works on topics related to wage and income inequalities, minimum wages, low pay, job quality...

Research manager,
Employment research unit
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Dragoș Adăscăliței is a research officer in the Employment unit at Eurofound. His current research focuses on topics related to the future of work, including the impact of...

Research officer,
Employment research unit
Publications results (55)

In the rapidly changing world of work, the traditional dichotomy of employee and self-employed is insufficient to capture the wide diversity of self-employed workers in Europe today. This report identifies five categories of self-employed, reflecting the wide-ranging attitudes, income levels, and

21 September 2017

This report examines developments in non-standard employment over the last decade. It looks at trends in the main categories of non-standard employment – temporary, temporary agency and part-time work and self-employment – based mainly on data from the European Union Labour Force Survey. It

13 September 2017

Across European countries, the ‘employment contract’ has been, and still is, the point of reference for determining the rights and obligations of both workers and employers. When direct subordinated employment is disguised as self-employment, it is termed ‘bogus’. Work can be contracted in several

27 July 2017

Employment relations remain defined vis-à-vis the standard employment relationship (permanent, full-time, direct). Fixed-term contracts are therefore understood as non-standard employment contracts by which an employer hires an employee for a fixed duration. The main difference between permanent and

27 July 2017

Regulated at European level, the posting of workers is a practice used between companies located in different countries A worker is posted when their original employer sends them to work, for a temporary period, in another company. Posting has been defined as a specific form of labour mobility

27 July 2017

Among the fraudulent contracting of work practices, one of the most difficult to identify is the creation of sham companies (usually, in another country). Sham companies are essentially new entities created to disguise the real employer. Creating a company, even abroad, is – of course – legal and

27 July 2017

A traineeship is generally defined as an education and training programme combined with work experience, devised for certain groups – usually unemployed young people. Various types of traineeship are found across EU Member States. Traineeships have recently been actively promoted by the European

27 July 2017

In 2016, somewhat later than in other developed economies, the EU recovered all the net employment losses sustained since the global financial crisis. Employment growth since 2013 has been only modestly skewed towards well-paid jobs; growth has been robust in low-paid and mid-paid jobs too. Newer

26 June 2017

Although standard employment is still dominant in European labour markets, an increasing range of new employment forms is emerging that differ in their implications for working conditions. This study explores strategic employee sharing, an employment form for companies that have specific HR needs

21 November 2016

The fraudulent contracting of work is an important issue in many European countries today. EU and national policymakers have turned their attention to violations of the basic protection provided by employment law and collective bargaining that are linked to the fraudulent use of certain employment

21 November 2016

Online resources results (249)

New package of wage agreements for steel industry

In September 2010, the German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall [1]) and the employers’ association for the German steel industry (Arbeitgeberverband Stahl [2]) agreed a new package of collective agreements, covering some 85,000 employees in the German steel industry in the northwest federal states (

Hospitals ordered to reduce part-time work

The issue of involuntary part-time work [1] has been on the agenda of Norway’s social partners for some time. The country has many part-time employees, particularly in female-dominated occupations such as nursing. One in three employed women aged 25–54 works part time. Furthermore, a document (in

Law on temporary work adopted

The law was passed by the National Assembly [1] on 26 October 2010. However, a week later, on 2 November, the National Council [2] voted to delay the law, urging the National Assembly to reconsider its decision (*SI0207103F* [3]). Nevertheless, on 16 November 2010, the parliament passed the law for

Joint statement on undeclared work in hotels and restaurants

The EU-level social partners in the hotels and restaurants sector signed a joint declaration on undeclared (239Kb PDF) [1] work on 3 December 2010. It took the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT [2]) and employer organisation Hotels, Restaurant and Cafés in

Survey results on firms’ employment relations

On 1 February 2011, the Federal Employment Agency (BA [1]) reported that unemployment had risen by 0.7 percentage points to 7.9% in January 2011. However, when compared to the unemployment figures of the previous year, 270,000 fewer people were registered as unemployed. BA attributes the lower

Initial impact of new self-contractor’s scheme

The first assessment report (in French, 3.24Mb PDF) [1] of the self-contractor’s scheme, drafted under the chairmanship of Senator Philippe Marini, was published on 22 July 2010 and the second report (in French, 2.37Mb PDF) [2], published by the Ministry of the Economy, Industry and Employment, was

Work-sharing saves jobs

When the impact of the financial and economic crisis hit Denmark in autumn 2008 many Danish companies in manufacturing and construction had already started restructuring [1], either through internal reorganisation or by moving production offshore to low-wage countries. The crisis was unexpected by

National agreements for home-based workers and telework

On 24 November 2010, in the presence of the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borisov, and the Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Totyu Mladenov, trade unions and employer associations signed two national agreements, one regulating homeworking [1] and a second dealing with the organisation and

Temporary agency work on the rise with economic recovery

Before the onset of the economic crisis, temporary agency work [1] (TAW) had been booming in Austria with an all-time high of 80,000–90,000 temporary agency workers in 2008, accounting for about 2.4% of the dependently employed workforce. With the recovery in the economy, there was an increase in

More employers opt for agency workers and fixed contracts

The survey (in German) [1] conducted by the German Metalworkers’ Union (IG Metall [2]) focuses mainly on the metalworking and steel industry, although it does cover, to a much smaller degree, the textile and woodworking industries. The union wrote to 8,274 works councils asking how their company


Blogs results (7)
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Standard employment is not simply being replaced by non-standard work; employment is becoming more diverse, and policy must accordingly become more tailored. The last decade has seen much public and policy debate on the future of work. Standard employment – permanent, full-time and subject to labour

15 Diciembre 2020
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Up to the start of 2020, recent EU economic and labour market trends were often discussed in terms of the periods before and after the Great Recession. It now appears likely that, in the short- to medium-term, the repercussions of that economic crisis will be dwarfed by the unfolding impact of the

21 Abril 2020
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Imagine you’re at work and something happens: you have to leave to visit a client, you have to go home to let in the plumber, or you have to collect the kids from school as the football training has just been cancelled. If you’re lucky, your employer gives you the flexibility to do this. If you’re

14 Mayo 2019
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Research Manager Isabella Biletta looks at fraudulent practices in the contracting of work. Such practices involve the abuse of legitimate employment relationships with the aim of sidestepping labour and social regulations and with the effect of undermining workers’ rights and fair competition in

1 Junio 2018
The many faces of self-employment In Europe

While the Europe 2020 strategy actively promotes entrepreneurial self-employment as a means to create good jobs, policy makers at national and EU level are actively looking at better social protection for self-employed workers. Understanding this paradox requires looking beyond the ‘self-employed’

26 Octubre 2017
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The EU has finally recovered all the net employment losses sustained since the global financial crisis. It has been a long and painful process. But there is at last growing evidence of positive momentum in EU labour markets, if not quite ‘animal spirits’. Many of those member states most affected by

26 Julio 2017
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More than one in 10 employees in the EU are employed on temporary contracts, but a majority of them would prefer a permanent contract. Temporary contracts help employers to manage their labour demand, but there are downsides for employees, such as job insecurity and lower pay.

19 Febrero 2016

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