Romania has lowest share of employees with temporary contracts in the EU

Only 1.2% of the employees in Romania had a temporary contract in 2017, this being the lowest share in the European Union (EU), according to data from the European statistical office Eurostat. Lithuania (1.7%), Latvia (3%), Estonia (3.1%), Bulgaria (4.4%) and Malta and the United Kingdom (both 5.6%) also registered low shares. At the opposite end, over one in four employees in Spain (26.8%) and Poland (26.1%), and more than one in five in Portugal (22%), the Netherlands (21.5%) and Croatia (20.6%) had a temporary contract in 2017, according to Eurostat. At EU level, 27 million employees aged 15 to 64 had a temporary contract last year, which represents 14.3% of all employees in the European Union. Temporary employment has fluctuated between 12.7% and 14.5% of all employees over the last 15 years. Data also showed that young people held by far the highest share of temporary contracts. Nearly 8 million young people, or almost half (43.9%) of employees aged 15 to 24, were employed under a temporary contract in the EU in 2017. Among EU Member States, the highest shares were reported in Spain (73.3% of young employees had a temporary contract) and Slovenia (71.6%) while the lowest were registered in Romania (4.1%), Latvia (6.7%) and Lithuania (6.8%). Survey shows gap between employers’ and employees’ expectations in Romania Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com