ECONOMY: Majority of part-time staff in Cyprus want more work

Some 8 million part-time workers in the EU would prefer to work more, including 52% of part-time staff in Cyprus feeling underemployed.

Cyprus was only behind Greece (70%) in the proportion of people who wanted to work more hours, the majority being women.

According to data released by Eurostat, among the population aged 15 to 74 in the EU, 230 million were employed in 2018, 17 million were unemployed and 134 million were economically inactive.

Around 8 in every 10 of those employed in the EU worked full-time (184 million) and 2 in 10 part-time (46 million).

Among these 46 million people working part-time, 8 million were underemployed, meaning they wished to work more hours and were available to do so. This corresponds to one fifth (18%) of all part-time workers and 4% of total employment in the EU in 2018.

Two thirds of these underemployed part-time workers were women (66%).

The proportion of underemployed part-time workers among total part-time workers varied significantly across the EU.

A majority of part-time workers aged 15 to 74 wished to work more hours in Greece (70% of part-time workers) and Cyprus (52%), closely followed by Spain (45%) and Portugal (37%).

At the opposite end of the scale, Czechia (5%) recorded the lowest shares of underemployed part-time workers, followed by the Netherlands and Estonia (both 9%), and Luxembourg and Germany (both 10%).

It should be noted that underemployed part-time workers were predominantly women in every EU Member State except Romania (36% were women), Bulgaria and Malta (both 50%).