Nearly 14% of employees in Cyprus had a temporary employment contract in the second quarter of 2019 according to figures published by Eurostat on Wednesday.
These show that over the last 17 years, temporary employment in the EU has fluctuated between 12.6% of total employees in the first quarter of 2003 to 13.6% in the second quarter of 2019, with a peak in the fourth quarter of 2006 (14.7%).
A total of 26 million employees aged 15 to 64 had a temporary employment contract in the EU in Q2 2019, representing 13.6% of total employees. Temporary employment was more common among female (14.2%) than male employees (13.2%).
In Cyprus the figure was 13.6% — equal to the EU average.
Highest share of employees with a temporary contract in Spain, lowest in Romania and Lithuania
Over one in four employees in Spain (26.4%) and more than one in five in Poland (22.2%), Portugal (21.0%) and the Netherlands (20.5%) had a temporary contract in the second quarter of 2019.
Temporary employees accounted for less than 2% of all employees in Romania and Lithuania (both 1.5%). Low shares were also recorded in Latvia (3.1%), Estonia (3.4%), Bulgaria (4.1%) and the United Kingdom (5.1%).
Young people held by far the highest share of temporary contracts
In the EU, in the second quarter of 2019, nearly 8 million young people or almost half (42.8%) of employees aged 15 to 24 were employed under a temporary contract compared with 11.6% of employees aged 25 to 54 and 6.5% of those aged 55 to 64.
The source data are accessible in Eurostat table lfsi_pt_q.
