Labour market latest trends

European Commission Eurostat

Description

1st quarter 2005 data : 63.2% of the working age population in employment
Population and social conditions
Target audience: Specialised/Technical

Sujets

• Labour economics
• Labor force
• Population statistics
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-EUROSTAT
• Nombre de lectures: 66
• Langue: English

Extrait

Statistics

in focus

POPULATION AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS

16/2005

Labour Market

Authors Fabrice ROMANS Ómar S. HARDARSON

C o n t e n t s Activity rates................................... 3

Employment rates .......................... 4

Part-time employment as share

of total employment ....................... 5

Average actual hours worked ....... 6

Share of employees with temporary contracts ......................................... 7

Share of person whose job started within past 3 months...................... 8

Unemployment rates ...................... 9

Long term unemployment rates.. 10

Methodological notes .................. 11

 Manuscript completed on: 26.09.2005 Data extracted on: 16.09.2005 ISSN 1024-4352 Catalogue number: KS-NK-05-016-EN-C © European Communities, 2005

Labour Market Latest Trends 1st quarter 2005 data

63.2% of the working age population in employment

This publication belongs to a quarterly series presenting the European Union Labour 1 Force Survey main results for the EU-25 and for all Member States .

Part-time jobs and temporary contracts stimulate the employment in the EU

In the first quarter 2005, 63.2% of the working age population (15-64 years of age) held a job or other business activity in the EU-25, compared to 62.6% one year before. Among member states, Spain (from 60.3% to 62.1%) and Slovenia (from 2 63.8% to 65.2%) recorded the highest increases .

The gender gap in employment continues to narrow: while the male employment rate st increased by 0.4 percentage points from 70.2% in the 1 quarter 2004 to 70.6% in the first quarter 2005, the female employment rate rose by 0.7 points in a year, to reach 55.8% of women aged 15 to 64 years.

As a result of the rise in the employment rate, the share of the active population (employed plus unemployed people) in the whole population aged 15-64 increased, to reach 69.8% in the 1st quarter 2005, compared to 69.4% one year before. The female unemployment rate decreased by 0.5 percentage points while the male 3 unemployment rate decreased by 0.2 points in this period . However, the long-term unemployment rate, which measures the share of the people unemployed for one year and more in the active population, remained almost unchanged (0.2 point decline for women and 0.1 point decline for men).

In the EU-25, the share of part-time employment in total employment increased between the first quarter of 2004 and the first quarter of 2005. For men, it grew by 0.6 point to 7.5%, while it rose by 1.0 point to 32.6% for women. The share of temporary contracts also increased.

Chart 1: Changes in some labour market indicators of the EU-25 from 2004Q1 to 2005Q1 (percentage point)

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

-0.2

-0.4

Men

Women

-0.6 Changes in activity Changes in Changes in share Changes in share Changes in Changes in long- rate (15-64) employment rate of part-time of temporary unemployment rate term unemp. rate (15-64) employment (15+) contracts (15+) (15-64) (15-64) Source: Eurostat, LFS

1  In this publication, as in the previous ones, the data have not been adjusted for seasonal variation, due to the short time series available. Therefore data have to be compared from one quarter to the same quarter one year before. 2 Quarterly data are not yet available for Luxembourg. From 2005Q1, German data come from a continuous labour force survey while for the previous years they are derived from estimates based on a survey which took place every year in March. So German data and European aggregates for 2005 are not fully comparable with previous years. 3  The unemployment rate calculated in this paper is directly derived from the Labour Force Survey data. The adjusted unemployment series (15+) published on a monthly basis by Eurostat can slightly differ from these results.