Abstract
The study aims to identify the EU’s trends in the use of flexible forms of working time and to determine the specifics of individual EU countries. The study monitors the flexibility of working time based on the following indicators: persons employed part-time (as a percentage of the total employment); involuntary part-time employment as % of total part-time employment; the share of employed persons by the flexibility to decide on working time by a country; the share of employed persons who can easily take one or two days off at a short notice by working at home. The paper uses descriptive statistics, analysis of the development of time series using the growth rate, sigma convergence, and weighted sum approach. All analyzed indicators were taken into account to express one value, based on which it is possible to compare countries. Thus, the study expressed the overall benefit using the weighted sum method. The maximum value of the total benefit expressed using all the indicators among the EU countries was reached by the Netherlands. One of the reasons may be the short period of parental leave and the large share of women working part-time for a long time. The second reason is the large share of young people working part-time. On the contrary, Bulgaria, where women spend a relatively long time with their children after birth and then start full-time employment, ranked the last. This should be justified by the fact that flexible forms of work are mainly used by women and their prevalence is largely dependent on the length of maternity and parental leave. AcknowledgmentThis paper is created within the project funded by the Scientific Agency of Slovak Ministry of Education VEGA reg. no. 1/0689/20 “Digital economy and changes in the education system to reflect labour market demands”.
Highlights
The current development in the EU countries is characterized by several specifics
Due to the absence of systematic processing of approaches to part-time employment and work with the possibility of working hours’ adjustment in the EU, this study focuses on the trends in the use of flexible forms of work that would determine the specifics of individual EU countries
According to Beckmann (2020), it is This paper aims to identify the EU trends in use of working with a limit of up to 450 Euros per month flexible forms of working time and to determine or working for 3 calendar months, respectively 70 the specifics of individual EU countries
Summary
The current development in the EU countries is characterized by several specifics. One of them is that demographic trends such as increasing life expectancy, declining birth rates, and changes in the population structure are beginning to have a more pronounced effect on the labor market. The amount of new emerging labor force is smaller than the amount of labor force leaving the market. This causes labor force shortages in the EU countries. Other serious changes include the increasing economic burden of the productive component of the population by the post-productive component. This leads to adjusting the pension system and increasing the tax burden
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