Access to social protection for people working on non-standard contracts and as self-employed in Europe : a study of national policies 2017

Neither the notion of non-standard employment nor the concept of self-employment are well-defined at national and EU-level. For non-standard employment, we rely on the ILO definition. By people in self-employment, we understand people working for their own account. One of the challenges of mapping the situation for the self-employed has been that the term 'self-employed' is understood differently across and even within the 35 countries covered in this report. In fact, there is currently no single, unambiguous definition applicable in any of the countries (except for Slovenia) drawing a clear-cut distinction between 'genuine', 'dependent' and 'bogus' self-employed. Relying on Eurostat's Labour Force Surveys, the following developments can be sketched. Between 2007 and 2015, there was a widespread increase in the share of non-standard work in many countries. The share of part-time work went up from 17.5% to 19.6%, while that of temporary jobs increased in 23 out of 33 countries (there are no data available for Liechtenstein and Turkey). However, over the period 2014-2016 the increase in the number of permanent employees exceeded the increase in the number of temporary employees, and full-time employment increased faster than part-time employment.