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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)

Agency Workers Regulations to be introduced unamended

The Agency Workers Regulations 2010 [1], implementing the EU agency workers directive, were drawn up by the previous Labour government in January 2010 and are due to come into force in October 2011. [1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/93/introduction/made

SER advises on position of self-employed workers and changing socioeconomic policy

The Social and Economic Council (SER [1]) issued its first recommendations on the position of the self-employed person [2] in September 2010. SER identified a 33% increase in the number of self-employed workers over the past decade: at over 675,000 people this amounted to around 9% of the national

Short-time working prevalent across Member States

In June 2010, the European Commission (Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs and Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities) issued a report, in the form of an occasional paper (742Kb PDF) [1], on short-time working arrangements as a response to

Changes to Hungarian Labour Code in 2010

The Hungarian Labour Code was introduced on 1 June 1992. Since then it has had about 50 amendments. However, there have been no fundamental, structural changes to mirror the economic, political and social reforms of the last decades.

Social partners agree regulation of home-based work

The number of self-employed workers, mostly female outworkers with no contract, is growing in Bulgaria. The latest study by the Society for Development and Homebased Production and the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (CITUB [1]) surveyed 500 homeworkers in 10 cities. Of these

Self-employed workers join Social and Economic Council

In March 2010, self-employed workers without staff (/zelfstandigen zonder personeel/, ZZP) – known as ZZP’ers – secured a seat on the Social and Economic Council (Sociaal-Economische Raad, SER [1]). The government’s permanent advisory body, which includes employee and employer representatives as

New EU directive aims to prevent exploitation of foreign workers

In the Czech Republic, as part of the generally binding labour law amendment, effective from 1 October 2004, the use of temporary agency employment replaced the so-called temporary assignment of employees to work for another employer. Under the current labour legislation, the employer – that is, the

New European observatory on cross-border temporary agency work

In a Joint Declaration (43Kb PDF) [1] on 28 May 2008, in response to the proposed directive on working conditions for temporary agency workers, the European sectoral social partners for temporary agency work [2] made reference to their joint work programme 2008–2009. This programme committed them to

Social partners review temporary layoff agreements

The Union of Metalworkers (IF Metall [1]) estimates that the agreement on temporary layoffs has saved 1,200 jobs, based on a survey conducted among the 60,000 members who work in companies which have signed the agreement. According to the agreement – which is a new feature in Swedish industrial

Increasing numbers employed through fraudulent temporary work agencies

In two years, the number of employees working through ‘/mala fide/’ or fraudulent temporary work agencies has almost doubled. While, in 2006, the figure was 80,000 workers, this irregular practice now involves some 150,000 people a year. More than half of the temporary agency workers from eastern


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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