The percentage of workers on temporary contracts is higher in most European labor markets than in the United States. But that does not mean that temp jobs are becoming more common in Europe or that they are a growing part of the overall labor market. Instead, both countries’ labor markets use temporary work arrangements in different ways and the overall share of temporary employment is limited by a combination of flexible dismissal policies and generous health and welfare regimes.

Emploi Temporaire en Europe : Où et Comment Postuler

Using cross-sectional data from the European Labour Force Survey (LFS) and longitudinal data from the OECD’s The Jobs Strategy panel study, I graph trends in the temporary employment rate across countries, regions and demographic groups from 1996 to 2024. The thick black line in each graph is the year specific, country-level temporary employment rate. I group the countries by their European region, which corresponds to the region’s welfare regime type: Anglophone (Liberal), Continental (Conservative), Eastern (Post-Socialist), and Southern (Mediterranean).

I find that overall, the emploi intérim en Europe has remained constant after 2007. However, there are large differences in trends among countries/regions, age groups and periods. Poland stands out as having high and rising rates of temporary employment before 2007 but low levels afterward. Spain and Italy are other examples of countries with rising, then stagnating, temporary employment rates. I also find that a change in the composition of the temporary employment sector has been one of the main drivers of these changes: a shift from short-duration contracts to those with longer durations, such as permanent contracts or contracts with a fixed end date.