Mothers in Luxembourg more likely to shift to part-time

Luxembourg is among the European Union (EU) countries where women are most likely to shift to part-time work after they have children.

Figures published by statistics office Eurostat also show that, across the EU, a full-time employee works on average 40.3 hours a week.

Men work more hours than women – 41 hours compared with 39.3.

Luxembourg falls just above the European average, with an average working week of 40.4 hours.

Referring to 2016, the results found that men in Luxembourg worked an average of 40.9 hours, and women, 39.6 hours.

The Eurostat report highlights that, across the EU, men with children are more likely to work full-time than men without children but that the opposite is true for women.

Mentionable change

Luxembourg is one of five countries the report describes as seeing "mentionable changes" in the number of women dropping from a full-time contract to a part-time one after having children, alongside Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and the UK.

"This means," the report states, "women in these countries rather shift to part-time work than leave the labour market when they have children."

Across the EU, 22% of women who do not have children work part time, but the figure rises to 39% when women have a child who is under the age of six.

The percentage remains well above 30% when children reach their teens.

For men, the part-time work rate remains below 10% regardless of their family situation.

Eurostat points out that part-time work for women is almost non-existent in some countries, such as Croatia, Lithuanua and Hungary, while it is "very common" in others, including Luxembourg.