19 May 2016 Press Release
Labour Force Survey 2015 10 million part-time workers in the EU would have preferred to work more Two-thirds were women
Among the population aged 15 to 74 in the European Union (EU), 220 million were employed, 23 million were unemployed and 136 million were economically inactive in 2015.
Around 8 in every 10 persons employed in the EU were working full time and 2 in 10 part-time. Among these 44.7 million persons in the EU working part-time in 2015, 10.0 million were under-employed, meaning they wished to work more hours and were available to do so. This corresponds to more than a fifth (22.4%) of all part-time workers and 4.6% of total employment in the EU in 2015. Two thirds of these underemployed part-time workers were women (66%).
Alongside the economically active population (employed and unemployed), 11.4 million economically inactive persons aged 15-74 in the EU had in 2015 a certain attachment to the labour market and could be considered as a potential additional labour force, equivalent to 4.7% of the EU labour force. Among them, around 9.3 million were available to work but not seeking, such as discouraged job seekers, and almost 2.2 million seeking work but not immediately available, for example students seeking a job to start after graduation. The majority of this potential additional labour force in the EU in 2015 was also women (56.7%)
This information comes from an article published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, based on the 2015 detailed results of the European Labour Force Survey.
page source http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat
