ZAGREB, May 25, 2018 - Last year, over 20% of workers in Croatia had a temporary employment contract while 14.33% of all employees in the EU had a temporary contract, according to figures provided by Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. This means that 27 million employees aged 15 to 64 in the European Union (EU) had a temporary contract in 2017, Eurostat said.
In 2017, this proportion was slightly higher for women (14.8%) than for men (13.8%). It was also higher in the euro area (16.0%) than in the EU.
Significant discrepancies can be observed in the use of temporary work contracts across the EU Member States and between age groups. Highest share of employees with a temporary contract in Spain and Poland; lowest in Romania and Lithuania. Over one in four employees in Spain (26.8%) and Poland (26.1%), and more than one in five in Portugal (22.0%), the Netherlands (21.5%) and Croatia (20.6%) had a temporary contract in 2017.
At the opposite end of the scale, temporary employees accounted for less than 2% of all employees in both Romania (1.2%) and Lithuania (1.7%). Low shares were also recorded in Latvia (3.0%), Estonia (3.1%), Bulgaria (4.4%), Malta and the United Kingdom (both 5.6%).
Young people held by far the highest share of temporary contracts. Last year in the EU, nearly 8 million young people, or almost half (43.9%) of employees aged 15 to 24, were employed under a temporary contract.
Across the EU member states, more than seven in ten young employees had a temporary contract in Spain (73.3%) and Slovenia (71.6%). Around two-thirds of them had such contracts in Poland (68.2%) and Portugal (65.9%), while about six in ten were affected in Italy (61.9%), Croatia (60.8%) and France (58.0%).
In contrast, the share of young people working under a temporary contract was less than 10% in Romania (4.1%), Latvia (6.7%) and Lithuania (6.8%).It was below 20% in Estonia (10.6%), Bulgaria (12.7%), Malta (13.0%), the United Kingdom (14.5%) and Hungary (17.6%).
