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Austria has the second highest part-time rate in the EU

by AI | 07.Sep 2024 | Europe in brief AI

With a part-time employment rate of almost one-third, Austria ranks second among the 27 EU member states, behind the Netherlands. As an analysis by the country’s statistics authority shows, there are still significant differences between men and women.

Archive image. From April to June, 51.6 percent of all employed women reported working part-time. Among men, 13.9 percent were employed part-time. Photo: La Nacion / Zuma Press / ContactoPhoto

Vienna – Austria has the second-highest part-time employment rate among all 27 EU countries. In the first quarter of 2024, 31.8 percent of all employed individuals in the country worked part-time. Austria thus ranked behind the Netherlands with 43.7 percent and ahead of Germany (30.6 percent) and Denmark (27.7 percent), according to Statistics Austria on Thursday. The part-time employment rate is lowest in Bulgaria (1.8 percent), Romania (3.1 percent), and Croatia (4.1 percent).

Based on the microcensus labor force survey, Statistics Austria has already calculated the part-time employment rate for the second quarter of 2024 in Austria, but no current data is yet available for the other EU countries. For the period from April to June, 1.098 million or 51.6 percent of all working women reported working part-time. Among men, 329,000 or 13.9 percent were employed part-time in the second quarter this year. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the part-time employment rate according to Statistics Austria increased by 0.5 percentage points for men and by 1.0 percentage points for women. Thirty years ago, the part-time employment rate for women in the Alpine republic was only 26 percent and for men, it was 4 percent.

To provide more career opportunities for mothers and fathers who are on leave or working part-time, social partners have been demanding a significant expansion of childcare and early childhood education in Austria for years. The government in Vienna has promised 50,000 additional places by 2030. Nearly 60 percent of the current kindergarten places for 3- to 5-year-olds nationwide are compatible with full-time employment, according to the second monitoring report on early childhood education published by Statistics Austria in August. (09/05/2024)