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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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Recent updates

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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 September 2023
Corporate news
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This report investigates the social groups whose attachment to the labour market may be unstable and who are most likely to have non-standard working arrangements, and the implications of such...

29 August 2023
Publication
Research report

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)

Ensuring greater social protection for self-employed people has been the subject of much policy debate in recent years. In 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Sudden reductions in income during the COVID-1

30 January 2024

This report investigates the social groups whose attachment to the labour market may be unstable and who are most likely to have non-standard working arrangements, and the implications of such arrangements, and job insecurity, for workers’ well-being, social exclusion, trust, perception of fairness

29 August 2023

Disclaimer - Please note that this report was updated with revised data (specifically for Bulgaria) on 23 March 2021.This report sets out to assess the initial impact of the COVID-19 crisis on employment in Europe (up to Q2 2020), including its effects across sectors and on different categories of

11 March 2021

Although standard employment (generally full-time and permanent) remains the dominant employment type across the EU, European labour markets are increasingly characterised by a variety of different forms. These new forms of employment involve new formal employment relationships or work patterns

15 December 2020

Megatrends, such as digitalisation, globalisation, demographic change and climate change, are transforming the world of work, with knock-on effects for working conditions and job quality. Against this background, this report examines working conditions and job quality from a sectoral perspective

05 November 2020

What have been the major trends and policy developments regarding the flexibilisation of employment in recent years? Eurofound’s work programme for 2017–2020 set out to document and capture these changes in the world of work. This flagship publication provides an overview of developments in Europe

16 April 2020

Casual work, both intermittent and on-call, contributes to labour market flexibility and is therefore increasingly used across Europe. In some countries, practices go beyond the use of casual employment contracts to include other types of contracts and forms of self-employment.

20 December 2019

This report sets out to describe what labour market segmentation is and why it is problematic for the labour market and society, as well as disadvantaged groups. It takes a broad view of the term to examine the situation that arises when the divergence in working conditions between different groups

02 December 2019

Annual review of working life 2017 is part of a series of annual reviews published by Eurofound and provides an overview of the latest developments in industrial relations and working conditions across the EU and Norway. The annual review collates information based on reports from Eurofound’s

22 October 2018

Platform work is a form of employment that uses an online platform to match the supply of and demand for paid labour. In Europe, platform work is still small in scale but is rapidly developing. The types of work offered through platforms are ever-increasing, as are the challenges for existing

24 September 2018

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 December 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 April 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 May 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 June 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 October 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 July 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 February 2016

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