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Europese enquêtes naar de arbeidsomstandigheden (EWCS)

Sinds de lancering in 1990 heeft de Europese enquête naar de arbeidsomstandigheden (EWCS) een overzicht gegeven van de arbeidsomstandigheden in Europa.

European Working Conditions Survey 2024

Eurofound carried out the fieldwork for the latest edition of its European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) during 2024. The EWCS 2024 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 look at how trend analysis could be maintained, in parallel to the face-to-face interviews for this survey edition, Eurofound also implemented an experiment for an online questionnaire for the first time.

The microdata for the EWCS 2024 will be available via the UK Data Service in late December 2025. Please refer to the Data availability page for more information on raw data access.

NEW - Fieldwork for the EWCS 2024 follow-up survey is underway and will run until 8 December 2025.

The 2024 edition of the survey provides 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

Analysis of the EWCS 2024 is still ongoing. In the meantime, Eurofound's first findings and podcast provide initial insights into the new edition of this survey.

Podcast-aflevering

30 June 2025

Episode 33De ontwikkeling van de arbeidsomstandigheden in Europa
Deze aflevering onderzoekt het evoluerende landschap van de Europese arbeidsomstandigheden, gelegen op het kruispunt van diepgaande technologische transformatie. Mary McCaughey spreekt met Barbara Gerstenberger, hoofd van de eenheid Arbeidsleven van Eurofound, die gebruikmaakt van inzichten uit de 35-jarige geschiedenis van de Europese enquête naar de arbeidsomstandigheden (EWCS). Deze enquêtereeks biedt een gedetailleerd perspectief op de longitudinale verschuivingen in de Europese arbeidstijd. In de discussie wordt beoordeeld hoe kunstmatige intelligentie en digitalisering de werkgelegenheid hervormen, waarbij parallellen worden getrokken met historische industriële verschuivingen, terwijl het voortdurende aanpassingsvermogen van de arbeidswereld wordt erkend.

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.

  • Continuity of survey analysis: Comparative analysis, rich set of indicators, job quality at the heart, different working situations, quality of working lives

  • Quality of findings and outputs: Relevance to users, quality of the questionnaire and finalisation process, quality of the translation, quality of the survey production process

  • Adaptability of data collection: Comparability over time but also new questions dealing with 'the future of work that we want', findings solutions to collect high-quality comparative data on job quality in a changing data collection environment

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.

The survey was carried out from February to November 2024.

Approximately 36,644 workers were interviewed in 35 countries, including the EU27, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

Face-to-face interviewing in the respondents home or neutral location, not in the workplace.

49 language versions of the questionnaire are available.

To display this data, use the filters below to select a question. Refine the results by selecting a country (or group of countries), apply additional filters (which vary throughout the surveys) or change the visualisation by selecting a preferred chart type.

Dashboard

EWCS 2024 (all questions)

  • Update 2 December 2025: The EWCS 2024 dashboard is temporarily unavailable due to updates. Back online soon.

This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.

Methodology

Contractor

Verian, Belgium

Coverage

27 EU Member States, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland

Fieldwork period

February–November 2024 

Target population

All residents of the countries mentioned between above of 16-74 years of age and in employment at the time of the survey. People were considered to be in employment if they had worked for pay or profit for at least an hour in the week preceding the interview (ILO definition). 

Sample

Multi-stage, stratified, random samples of the working population in each country. Depending on the availability of high-quality registers, sampling was carried out using individual-level, household-level and address-level registers, or through enumeration using a random-walk approach. Country-level samples were stratified by region and degree of urbanisation. In each stratum, primary sampling units (PSUs) were randomly selected proportional to size. Subsequently, a random sample of households was drawn in each PSU. Finally, unless individual-level registers were used, in each household the selected respondent was the person in work who would have their birthday next. 

Sample size

The target sample was 1,000 interviews in all countries except Luxembourg (500), Cyprus, Malta and Kosovo (800). Slovenia (1,300) and Belgium (2,000) had a higher target since they topped up the base sample size at their own cost. The final number of valid interviews for the EWCS 2024 in all 35 countries is 36,644.

Type

Face to face, at the respondent’s home using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI); median interview duration 42 minutes. 

Quality assurance

Respondents were interviewed in the national language(s) of their country. Overall 49 language versions were used. 

The English source questionnaire is available.

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The language versions of the questionnaire are made available to researchers for background information. Note that there may be some very small discrepancies between the language version and the English source version due to last-minute scripting adjustments prior to fieldwork which are not reflected in the Excel version. If any anomalies are identified the source version should be considered the reference. Eurofound would be grateful to be informed of any issues arising in the translations.

Download the questionnaire in the language of each country below.

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Eurofound experts

You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.

Agnès Parent-Thirion

Senior research manager
Working life research

Agnès Parent-Thirion is senior onderzoeksmanager bij de afdeling Arbeidsleven van Eurofound, belast met de planning, ontwikkeling en uitvoering van onderzoeksprojecten op het gebied van arbeidsomstandigheden, met name de Europese enquête naar de arbeidsomstandigheden (EWCS) en de analyses daarvan. Zij is verantwoordelijk voor de buitengewone editie van de EWCS 2021 en voor de voorbereiding van de vragenlijst voor de EWCS 2024. Haar onderzoeksinteresses omvatten arbeidsomstandigheden, kwaliteit van banen, het monitoren van arbeidsomstandigheden, werkorganisatie, gender, de toekomst van werk en tijd. Ze werkt al meer dan tien jaar op het gebied van Europese vergelijkende enquêtes, in alle aspecten, waaronder ontwerp, ontwikkeling van vragenlijsten, veldwerk, kwaliteitscontrole en analyse. Ze is afgestudeerd in economie en management aan de universiteiten Paris IX Dauphine en Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne en heeft een postdoctoraal diploma in statistiek van Trinity College Dublin. Ze heeft onlangs online cursussen over kunstmatige intelligentie afgerond: onderzoekend leiderschap met MIT Sloan Executive Education en 'Les grand enjeux de la transition: re-ouvrir l'horizon, comprendre pour agir' met de Campus de la Transition. Voordat ze bij Eurofound kwam, werkte ze een aantal jaren bij de Europese Commissie.

Sophia MacGoris

Surveys officer
Working life research

Sophia MacGoris is medewerker van de afdeling Arbeidsleven van Eurofound. Ze werkt aan alle drie de enquêtes van Eurofound. Ze is al vele jaren betrokken bij grensoverschrijdende enquêtes en gebruikt haar ervaring en haar transversale rol om de continuïteit van het leren en de kwaliteitsborging op het hoogste niveau te garanderen tijdens het hele enquêteproces. Voordat ze in 1996 bij Eurofound in dienst trad, werkte ze enkele jaren bij de Europese Commissie in Brussel op het gebied van wetenschap, onderzoek en ontwikkeling. Ze heeft een BSc (Hons) in sociale wetenschappen, gespecialiseerd in sociaal beleid.

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European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
The tripartite EU agency providing knowledge to assist in the development of better social, employment and work-related policies