In 2023, the share of part-time employees aged 20-64 in the EU was 17.1%, a slight increase from 16.9% in 2022. Looking back over the last 10 years, the share of part-time workers registered a slow but steady decreasing trend from 19.1% in 2014 and 2015 to 16.9% in 2022, only going up last year.
The share of part-time employment for men has remained stable at around 8% throughout this period, but for women, the share decreased by 3.9 percentage points (pp) from 31.8% in 2014 to 27.9% in 2023.
Source dataset: lfsi_pt_a
The highest share of part-timers were women with children
In 2023, around one-third (31.8%) of employed women aged 25-54 with children in the EU were engaged in part-time work, in contrast to 20.0% of employed women without children. Conversely, among men, only 5.0% of those with children worked part-time compared to the ones without children (7.3%). The difference in part-time work shares between women and men with children was therefore a significant 26.8 pp in 2023 and for men and women without children, it was less than half, with 12.7 pp.
The biggest gap between women and men with children was registered in Austria, a 61.2 pp (69.2% versus 8.0%) difference. Germany and the Netherlands followed with 57.2 pp and 54.8 pp differences. These 3 EU countries also have the highest shares of women with children working part-time.
Romania is the only EU country where the share of men with and without children working part-time is higher than the women’s shares: 2.9% and 3.5% for men with and without children versus 2.4% and 2.7% for women with and without children.
Data show that the share of employed women with children working part-time exceeded that of women without children in all EU countries except Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Greece and Romania.
Source dataset: lfst_hhptety