05.01.2024

THERE IS WORK FOR EVERYONE - EMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE HAS NEVER BEEN SO HIGH

Since the end of the pandemic, the level of employment in the EU has reached its historical peak. 74.6% of the population between the ages of 20 and 64 work, according to last year's data. If the upward trend is not interrupted by something extraordinary, the European Union will very soon achieve its ahead-of-time goal of employment of 78% by 2030. This is according to a recently published Eurostat study.

In 2017, the EC, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe adopted a pillar of social rights with an action plan aimed at promoting fair and efficient labor markets and social systems across Europe.

To achieve this goal, the EU has set three targets for the labor market by 2030 – at least 78% of the working-age population is employed, at least 60% of adults are in training every year and the number of people at risk of poverty, to be reduced by at least 15 million people.

The pandemic and the crisis that followed had almost blocked progress, but the data now suggests that, at least in terms of employment, the situation is not bad. In 2022, the number of working people between 20 and 64 in the EU is a total of 193 million people, representing 74.6% of all in this age group. For comparison, just 10 years ago the average employment in the union was 66.8%, and in Bulgaria - 62.9%, but since then it has been continuously increasing, except for 2020.

There are also countries that have already achieved and even exceeded the 2030 target. These are the Netherlands with 82.9%, followed by Sweden with 82.2%, Estonia with 81.9%, the Czech Republic with 81.3% and Malta with 81.1%. These indicators show that there are practically no unemployed people there, except for pensioners, children and those who are studying. In contrast, Croatia (69.7%), Spain (69.5%), Romania (68.5%), Greece (66.3%) and Italy (64.8%) have employment rates below 70% .

Unlike its other economic indicators, our country does not perform badly in terms of employment. After a drop of about two percentage points during the pandemic year 2020, in 2022 in our country it increased to 75.7% and it is higher than the average for the European Union. In any case, a larger percentage of the able-bodied population works in Bulgaria than in Italy and Spain, as well as our neighbors.

In addition, our country shows a relatively small difference in employment between the sexes, which is also monitored as an indicator by the EC. Working women in the age group 20-64 are 71%, and for men - 80 percent, while there are countries such as Italy and Greece, in which about half of the female population works, and for men employment reaches two thirds. In the three Baltic states and Finland, the gender gap is only around three percentage points. The data show one feature – in each country, the higher levels are mainly in the regions around the capitals.

For example, in the Bulgarian South-West region, which also includes Sofia, employment has already reached 81.7% of the working-age population in 2022.

There are a total of 242 regions in the EU. With the exception of the Finnish archipelago of Åland, where occupancy is a record 89.7%, the rest at the top of this ranking are all around the capitals of their respective countries.

Such are, for example, the Polish Warsaw Metropolitan Region with 85.4% employment, the Swedish Stockholm Region with 85.1% and many other regions in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In the Czech Republic, for example, in all 8 regions employment has passed the target of 78%, but in the region around Prague it is the highest.

According to economists, employment is a much more important indicator of the labor market than unemployment. Its historically lowest level in our country does not yet mean a good state of the labor market, because it can also be due to migration. When many people of working age leave the country, and the statistics continue to show them as permanent residents in Bulgaria, this naturally reduces the unemployment rate.

However, the situation in Bulgaria at the moment is not like this - decreasing unemployment is combined with an increase in the employed. Since the last quarter of 2021, data from the National Institute of Employment Statistics show a continuous upward trend. The increase of 3.8% at the end of 2022 compared to a year earlier is even one of the largest on an annual basis in the last decade.

"Record-high employment is an impressive achievement in itself, especially given the difficult and uncertain economic environment of the last 2 years and the numerous predictions of an economic crash. More impressively, however, employment in the European Union has surpassed that of the United States. After ten years of dominance, employment in North America is now lower than in Europe, and not because of a decline in the US, but because of record high employment in Europe," commented Georgi Angelov, senior economist at the Open Society Institute.

According to him, these data illustrate the major reforms that the European Union made after the global financial crisis and which significantly changed the competitiveness of the Old Continent. This has borne fruit right during and after the pandemic. European anti-crisis programs, for example, according to Angelov, are more effective and targeted, in contrast to handing out checks and trillion dollar deficits in the US.

"Even in Bulgaria, the 60/40 measure worked well, without costing much, unlike the electricity compensations for the kalpak business later, which were expensive, ineffective and only pumped up inflation instead of reducing it," added Angelov.

Our incomes are among the lowest, but in only three countries do they work harder than us

In addition to relatively high employment, the labor market in Bulgaria is also distinguished by one of the longest working weeks in Europe, Eurostat data show. They largely dispel the myth that rich countries work a lot and poor countries less, as well as that northern peoples are very hardworking and southern people are not so much.

Bulgaria, for example, is one of the poorest countries in the EU, but with a long working week, while the Netherlands, which is among the richest, has the shortest.

The survey measures in hours only the duration of the working week, including main and overtime work, whether paid or not. Travel time to and from work, as well as rest and meal time, are subtracted from the data.

Thus, the average working week in Europe is 37.5 hours. But there are significant differences between the newly acceded countries and those with a lower standard of living and the rest. For example, the working week in Serbia, which is a candidate for EU membership, is the longest - 43.3 hours. They work a little less in our southern neighbor Greece - 41 hours, and in Poland 40.4 hours. Immediately after are Romania and Bulgaria - an average of 40.2 hours.

Among the countries where work is above the European average are also Portugal, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc.

At the other extreme are the countries with strong economies and high incomes. For example, in Germany the average working week is about 2 hours longer than in the Netherlands. Fewer than average also work in Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Belgium, etc.

In many of the countries with developed economies, the lower duration is also due to the fact that the labor legislation there strongly restricts work on Saturdays and Sundays. In France and Hungary, for example, there is even a regulation that does not allow supermarkets and other commercial establishments to be open on Sundays, and on Saturdays they must have reduced working hours. There are also strong restrictions in this regard in Greece, where even municipal markets are closed on Sundays, national holidays and weekends.

According to the Eurostat study, there are quite large differences in the duration of employment and by professional activities. In Europe, they work the longest in agriculture, where wages are traditionally among the lowest for the respective country. For farmers, the working week lasts an average of 42.8 hours. Construction workers, hotel and restaurant workers, and transport workers follow - all activities that are rather at the lower end of the pay scale. In tourism, for example, in the height of the active season in our country, work is often done for 14 and even 16 hours a day, although this lasts only for two or three months of the year - in summer or winter.

In construction, the working day is long to a large extent also because some of the activities depend on weather conditions. When weather permits, more work is done to compensate for delays due to bad weather conditions.

Administrators, nurses, doctors, teachers and those employed in the entertainment industry are more likely to work a short work week, between 33 and 34 hours per week.

There is also a difference between the sexes - in all the countries studied, men work longer than women. However, the difference, especially for those working full-time, is not significant, and in some countries it is even absent. In the three Baltic countries and in Finland, gender equality is even evident in employment data. But in the Netherlands and Iceland, for example, men work 4 hours more per week than women.

"The length of the working week is a good indicator, but labor productivity, the organization of processes, and whether or not the relevant economy produces products with high added value must also be taken into account. This is the explanation why in richer countries they can afford shorter working hours than in others", explained Zhasmina Saraivanova - chief expert on labor legislation at the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA).

"The data in such studies depend a lot on whether the relevant labor legislation facilitates or hinders overtime work. In richer countries, there are usually more brakes, and if an employer wants to pay more for overtime, the law puts such requirements on him that his bill does not come out," she added.

Saraivanova recalled that it was not by chance that the idea of a 4-day work week started in Western European countries, and that the trends to work remotely from the office or hybrid, which the pandemic has simply strengthened, come from there.

The experiment of working 4 days a week, for example, is currently most advanced in Great Britain, the Netherlands and partly in Germany. Even there, however, the working week is not officially 4 days long, but the labor legislation allows any employer to introduce it. It is mainly characteristic of hybrid workers, for example, where processes allow people to work both remotely and in the office. In Bulgaria, the Labor Code also does not prohibit a 4-day working week at full employment.