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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)

The sixth European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) builds on the lessons learned from the previous five surveys to paint a wide-ranging picture of Europe at work across countries, occupations, sectors and age groups. EU employment policy priorities aim to boost employment levels, prolong working

17 November 2016

Many EU Member States have implemented reforms to improve the sustainability of their pension systems. However, the impact of discouraging early retirement and increasing the pension age on effective retirement ages is limited, as many people are unable or unmotivated to work until pension age.

09 September 2016

Developments in Working Life in Europe 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 European Union and Norway.

05 September 2016

European countries face the challenges of ageing populations supported by shrinking workforces, more precarious types of employment, and in many cases, a decreasing number of jobs in the wake of the economic crisis. As a result, the issue of how to enable more people to participate in the labour

27 July 2016

The right to free movement for workers within the European Union was enshrined in Article 48 of the EEC Treaty in 1957. Nowadays, private labour market intermediaries – such as temporary work agencies and employment placement agencies – contribute to facilitating this labour mobility in their role

27 April 2016

Against a background of high youth unemployment, policymakers are paying more attention to encouraging young people to start their own businesses as a means of easing their entry into the labour market.

13 April 2016

Smartphone car service Uber, a successful company example of the sharing economy, has spread to many EU Member States in recent years. However, many employers and unions are concerned about its challenge to fair competition for other businesses in the sector and about the erosion of working

25 January 2016

Temporary employment has increased since the 1980s in most European countries as a result of demands for greater flexibility in labour markets and subsequent reforms of employment protection legislation. This report presents a broad picture of temporary employment across the EU27 between 2001 and

15 December 2015

Air transport has been in the news in recent months as strikes and difficulties in social dialogue across the European Union have strained relations between the sector’s unions and companies. Disputes in the different countries have revolved around pay and working conditions, restructuring and

09 December 2015

The First Central American Working Conditions and Health Survey, carried out in 2011, found that many people are self-employed, and that three-quarters of the workforce are not covered by social security.

16 June 2015

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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