Among the EU leaders

More and more Austrians are working part-time

There is no data on how many hours per week part-time employees work; part-time is defined as "between twelve hours and full-time".

(Bild: Manuel Schwaiger)

The number of part-time jobs in Austria has risen by 30 percent within ten years. While around 950,000 people worked part-time in 2013, this figure had risen to 1,250,000 by 2023. Family commitments not only influence women's decision to work at all, but also the extent to which they do so. 

• Part-time work affects 986,000 women and 261,000 men in Austria. It is the most widespread atypical form of employment, followed by fixed-term employment contracts (excluding apprenticeships) and marginal employment (less than twelve hours per week), temporary work and freelance contracts. Overall, the number of atypical employment relationships has risen by 26.6% (1.8 million) since 2013.

• The number of fixed-term contracts has also risen sharply, by 20 percent. In 2023, 243,000 people were in fixed-term employment contracts, compared to 203,000 in 2013. Temporary work increased by 14.5 percent to 85,000, while marginal employment rose by 9.9 percent to 191,000. The number of freelance contracts fell by 7.7 percent to 30,000 compared to 2013.

Big differences between women and men:

• While normal employment relationships were still the norm for employed men in 2023, this was not the case for women. More than one in two employed women were in atypical employment, most frequently part-time.

• When men work part-time, it is predominantly (59 percent) for one of the following three reasons: because of education or vocational training (26.3 percent, women: 9.9 percent), because they do not want a full-time job (23.7 percent, women: 24.8 percent) or because they cannot find one (nine percent, women: 6.3 percent).

• Every second employed woman worked part-time in 2023. At 51.6%, Austria's part-time employment rate for women is one of the highest in Europe; the EU average is just 29.3%. By contrast, the rate for men is only slightly above the European average.

• Family commitments therefore not only influence women's decision to work at all, but also the extent to which they do so. The part-time rate for women with young children under the age of 15 was 73.3 percent (men: 8.1 percent), but women with older children aged 15 and over were still more likely than average to work part-time (57.4 percent, men: 9.2 percent). 

"More and more people in Austria are working part-time, fixed-term, marginal or temporary jobs. In 2013, less than a third of the non-self-employed were in such employment relationships, in 2023 it was 36.7%," says Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.

The part-time rate rose from 26.7% to 31.6% during this period. Only the Netherlands has an even higher part-time rate in the EU.