Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey - Spring 2021

The third round of the Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey took place in spring 2021, a full year into the pandemic. It was a critical period as countries were grappling with stringent lockdown restrictions aimed at containing the spread of new virus strains, while vaccination programmes were being rolled out. The survey ran from 12 February to 31 March 2021, with a large number of respondents taking part.

The e-survey aimed to pinpoint emerging issues since the start of the pandemic, including increased job insecurity, declines in mental well-being, setbacks in recent gains in equality, fall in levels of trust in institutions, challenges to work–life balance and vaccine hesitancy.

A particular emphasis was placed on the most vulnerable groups that were hit by the crisis in order to prevent them from falling further behind. Building on the previous e-survey, additional questions covered attitudes and willingness to be vaccinated, trust in science and pharmaceutical companies, use of and trust in social media, and access to and quality of public services during COVID-19.

• Round 3: The e-survey aimed to highlight the social and economic realities of people after nearly a full year of living with COVID-19 restrictions.

• Mental well-being has reached its lowest level across all age groups since the onset of the pandemic over a year ago. This is especially prominent among young people and those who have lost their job.

• As the pandemic progressed, the biggest increase among parents reporting they were too tired after work to do household tasks was found among women with young children, particularly women with young children who worked only from home.

• Existing inequalities are widening because of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable groups. The findings show that difficulties in making ends meet increased significantly among those already in a precarious situation.

• While the incidence of working from home has declined in the latest phase of the pandemic, the preference to do so every day has increased since summer 2020. Most employees still expressed a preference to combine working from home and from the employer's premises.

• Citizens’ satisfaction with crisis support measures has declined dramatically, with only 12% now feeling support measures are fair, down from 22% in summer 2020. Those who felt obtaining support was easy and efficient also fell from 16% in summer 2020 to 10% in spring 2021. Close to one in ten respondents have had a request for financial support rejected.

• Trust in institutions has plummeted, especially trust in national governments which fell from 4.6 in summer 2020 to 3.9 in spring 2021. Trust in national governments across all Member States sank below levels recorded at the start of the pandemic. Trust in the EU also fell but remains higher than trust in national governments.

• Over a quarter of people living in Europe indicate a hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccine, with men revealing themselves more hesitant (29%) than women (25%). Vaccine hesitancy is also associated strongly with low levels of trust and social media use, with countries that register low levels of trust in government registering higher levels of vaccine hesitancy.