European Working Conditions Survey 2024

Eurofound has launched fieldwork for the next edition of its European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) in 2024, aiming to interview approximately 50,000 workers in 35 countries. It covers all EU Member States and 8 other European countries: Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia. The fieldwork runs until November 2024 with first results and data available in 2025. The EWCS 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 ensure that trend analysis can be maintained, the traditional face-to-face mode will be supplemented by online interviews for the first time.

The 2024 edition of the survey will provide 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

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.

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.

For further information about the European Working Conditions Surveys, contact Sophia MacGoris.