More men in part-time employment

(CS) While there was a significant increase of men in part-time employment between 2004 and 2012, part-time work continues to be dominated by women in Luxembourg, with nearly 36 percent of women working part-time.

In 2012, there were 45,000 resident workers in part-time employment, of which 38,000 were women. While this was an increase of around 10,000 women since 2004, the number of men in part-time work more than doubled over the same period, from just 3,000 to 7,000.

However, still only around 4.3 percent of men worked part-time last year compared to 35.9 percent of women.

Unsurprisingly, the sectors attracting a largely female workforce, saw the highest proportion of part-time workers, including professional cleaning services (72.5 percent) and healthcare and social worker jobs (37.3 percent).

Industry (4.8 percent) and construction (5.4 percent), meanwhile, saw the lowest number of part-time workers.

Overall increase in part-time work

Despite the rise of men in part-time work, Luxembourg remains at the bottom of EU28, with only Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland recording lower figures of men in part-time employment.

The trail-blazer is the Netherlands, which counts just over a fifth of men working in part-time jobs and at the same time has over three quarters of women employed part-time, pointing towards more shared household and child care responsibilities.

Luxembourg followed Austria and Germany (both 45.4 percent), Belgium (43.3 percent), the UK (41 percent) and Sweden (37.2 percent) in the line-up for women in part-time jobs.

On the whole, part-time work increased in the EU, from 16.8 percent of the workforce in part-time jobs in 2004 up to 20.5 percent last year. Luxembourg lay below the average overall, with part-time employment climbing from 16.4 percent to 18.3 percent between 2004 and 2012.

Children remain key factor

Children continued to be a major influence on part-time employment. While 24.9 percent of women without children worked part-time in 2012, this number rose to 37.9 percent for women with one child, 48.3 percent for women with two children and even 53.4 percent for women with three or more children.

For men, however, the percentage of part-time workers remained stable regardless of their family situation.

Over a fifth of part-time workers said they worked part-time because of childcare or caring for another adult unable to work. Another 14 percent cited other family and personal reasons.

For the full study in French visit statec.lu