In this blog piece, originally posted on Social Europe, Eurofound researchers Carlos Vacas-Soriano and Enrique-Fernández-Macías look at the development of income inequalities in Europe since the Great Recession.
The expanding use of digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers for work for home and elsewhere is rapidly transforming the traditional model of work. It can improve work-life balance, reduce commuting time, and boost productivity, but it can also potentially result in longer working hours, higher work intensity and work-home interference.
Eurofound has launched its new work programme for 2017 to 2020. This document sets out the activities the Agency plans to undertake in the next four years to support European decision-makers in formulating effective policies for the improvement of quality of life and work in a fair and competitive Europe during this challenging period.
Making work sustainable is not simply a challenge for politicians and policymakers in the European Union: it is a fundamental issue that underpins the future of the world of work in Europe. It goes beyond the mantra of raising employment rates and deals with productivity and innovation – and the everyday lives of workers throughout the EU.
And even in the confused and contentious context of the new US President-elect as well as the EU’s post- Brexit deliberations, it is hard to argue otherwise.
But, while having a job in the first place is clearly of paramount importance to people - and society at large – there is also a more sophisticated issue at play with wider ramifications for the world of work and life today: the quality of
Come see how EU Agencies work and what they deliver to the EU at the EU Agencies Forum in the European Parliament on 6 – 7 December 2016
The overview report of the pan-European sixth European Working Conditions Survey #6EWCS is launched today 17 November 2016
In the following blog piece, Eurofound researchers Massimiliano Mascherini and Martina Bisello look in-depth at The Gender Employment Gap: Challenges and solutions report, and the collective responsibility to ensure that everyone in Europe has the freedom to participate in the labour market.
Eurofound launches the overview report of its 6th European Working Conditions Survey (6th EWCS) at a joint event with the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, on 17 November 2016. Join the debate on Twitter at #6EWCS
Partial retirement schemes can be an important part of the solution to improving sustainability of Europe’s pension systems.
Eurofound launches the fieldwork for the fourth edition of its European Quality of Life Survey today. The survey, which offers a comprehensive picture of the views of people living across 33 countries including the EU Member States and candidate countries, will be carried out over the coming 13 weeks.
The fourth edition of the European Quality of Life Survey covers 33 countries, 28 EU Member S
Inadequate and poor housing is costing EU economies nearly €194 billion per year in terms of both direct costs associated with healthcare and related medical or social services, as well as indirect costs such as lost productivity and reduced opportunities. The removal of housing inadequacies across the EU, or at least improving them to an acceptable level, would cost about €295 billion at 2011 pri
Some interesting figures from the July/August edition of Eurofound News:
13,000 – the entire workforce of Marinopoulos, one of the largest supermarket chains in Greece, who have been made redundant as a result of the company’s bankruptcy.
22% – the gender pay gap in the Czech Republic, which in March 2016 prompted the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs to launch a five-year campaign to na
From Eurofound News July/August 2016
Taking action to make work sustainable
For Europe to achieve its goals for growth, workers will have to work for longer and more people will have to work. This requires new thinking to make work sustainable over the life course. In other words, it means achieving living and working conditions that enable workers to retain their physical and mental health,
The figure above, derived from Eurofound’s recent report on Job creation in SMEs, illustrates the bundle of factors that determine whether an SME will create jobs – some relating to the company itself (internal) and others relating to the economic and institutional environment in which it operates (external).
Several of the elements are interrelated or have an influence on each other. The stre
Newly appointed Director at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), Michael O’Flaherty, visited Eurofound for the first time on 27 May.
A meeting with Eurofound’s Deputy Director, Erika Mezger, and other Agency staff included an open exchange on the activities of the network of EU Agencies and discussion on the work of the cluster grouping of Justice and Home Affairs Agencies.
Fairness in the European labour market was the vision evoked by Commissioner Thyssen in her opening speech at the launch of the European Platform to tackle undeclared work on 27 May.
Aimed at enhancing cooperation in tackling undeclared work, the new European Platform was set up by the European Commission, together with Member States and stakeholders.
Eurofound has observer status in the P
Europe has begun to emerge from its prolonged economic slump: in 2014–2015, for instance, over four million new jobs were created in the EU28. Eurofound’s fifth annual European Jobs Monitor report looks at changes in net employment between Q2 2011 and Q2 2015, at Member State level and in the EU overall.
It uses a ‘jobs-based’ approach to describe employment shifts quantitatively (how many job
A 2014 study from think-tank Bruegel estimates that over the next 20 years, more than 50% of the EU workforce will have their job partly replaced through automation. Advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and mobile robotics are likely to affect low-wage, low-skill sectors that have traditionally been immune from this high-tech automation.
This is the context of change against w
The Eurofound yearbook 2015: Living and working in Europe has just been published, highlighting research into pivotal social and employment issues in Europe, in a year when Eurofound celebrated the 40th anniversary of its establishment.
The yearbook describes 12 months of divergent trends in the work and lives of people in Europe. Working conditions of those at work have not, on the whole, been
