Looking back over the last 10 years, the share of part-time workers across the EU registered a slow but steady decreasing trend from 19.1% in 2014 and 2015 to 16.9% in 2022, only going up last year.
The share of part-time employment for men has remained stable at around 8% throughout this period, but for women the share decreased by 3.9 percentage points (pp) from 31.8% in 2014 to 27.9% in 2023.
In 2023, around one-third (31.8%) of employed women aged 25-54 with children in the EU were engaged in part-time work, in contrast to 20.0% of employed women without children. Conversely, among men, only 5.0% of those with children worked part-time compared to the ones without children (7.3%). The difference in part-time work shares between women and men with children was therefore a significant 26.8 pp in 2023 and for men and women without children, it was less than half, with 12.7 pp.
For Latvia, 5% of employed men with children and 8.1% of women with children were engaged in part-time work. Among men without children the figure was 5.2% and among women without children it was 9.0% – in both cases only minor differences.
"In Latvia, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria, the proportion of part-time workers in total employment was relatively low regardless of the presence of children and was lower than 10.0% for employed men and employed women, with or without children," noted Eurostat.
The biggest gap between women and men with children was registered in Austria, a 61.2 pp (69.2% versus 8.0%) difference. Germany and the Netherlands followed with 57.2 pp and 54.8 pp differences. These 3 EU countries also have the highest shares of women with children working part-time.
Romania is the only EU country where the share of men with and without children working part-time is higher than the women’s shares: 2.9% and 3.5% for men with and without children versus 2.4% and 2.7% for women with and without children.
Data show that the share of employed women with children working part-time exceeded that of women without children in all EU countries except Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Greece and Romania.
Eurostat also noted "a persistent gender divide in how parenthood or guardianship affects employment patterns across Europe. Men with children generally retain or increase their employment rates, and part-time work remains rare for them in contrast to women. This reflects the ongoing gender disparity where men often remain in full-time work or increase their participation after having children, while women may reduce their participation."
