Employment: for non-EU citizens in the EU jobs are part-time

Brussels – In the EU, non-EU nationals are more likely to work part-time. This is what emerges from data released by Eurostat on immigration and integration. Between 2014 and 2024, stresses the European Statistical Institute, non-EU men and women “consistently” had the highest share of part-time employees aged 20-64. There is, however, a trend towards absorption, in the sense of a decrease in the employment ratio of non-EU nationals with a limited working-hours contract, down from 28.6 per cent in 2014 to 22.2 per cent at the end of 2024. 

Apart from that, part-time work is the rule for women. At the end of 2024, more than two out of three women from non-EU countries were employed on a part-time basis (36.8 per cent), compared to the different treatment of their male colleagues, for whom the half-day contract was practically the exception (11.8 per cent). It is not a question of discrimination, but rather an all-European structural problem: Eurostat underlines that “regardless of citizenship, at EU level, women had higher shares of part-time employment than men“. 

This last aspect confirms a situation that has never been remedied. Already in 2015, Eurostat reported gender inequality in contractual terms that penalise women, and specifically their role as mothers. There is a cultural aspect whereby motherhood distracts too much from office duties, which apparently has not been overcome. There also remains a work culture devoted to contracts other than full-time and permanent ones, which is also not a new phenomenon. Immigrants from third countries are no exception and end up being kept on the sidelines, despite the fact that they may also offer valuable alternatives to the needs of the labour market. 

In this sense, Eurostat notes that non-EU nationals are more likely to be on fixed-term contracts. Between 2014 and 2024, non-EU nationals consistently had the highest share of employees aged 20-64 with fixed-term contracts, peaking at 27.1 per cent in 2018 before dropping to 22.5 per cent in 2024.