Employment by permanency of the job in European Union (27 countries)

About this data

Indicator

Employment by permanency of the job

Unit

Persons

Source

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Licence

OECD Terms and Conditions (attribution required)

Coverage

21 places, 552 data points, 1980–2025

Last refreshed

19 August 2026

This dataset contains data on permanent and temporary workers based on the type of work contract of their main job. Data are further broken down by professional status - employees, total employment - by sex and by standardised age groups (15-19, 15-24, 20-24, 25-54, 55-64, 65+, total). Data are reported for employees. Temporary employees are wage and salary workers whose job has a pre-determined termination date as opposed to permanent employees whose job is of unlimited duration. They include: i) persons with a seasonal job; ii) persons engaged by an employment agency or business and hired out to a third party for carrying out a “work mission”; iii) persons with specific training contracts (including apprentices, trainees, research assistants, probationary period of a contract, etc.). Country-specific exceptions to this generic definition may be found in LFS_NOTES_SOURCES. In order to facilitate analysis and comparisons over time, historical data for OECD members have been provided over as long a period as possible, often even before a country became a member of the Organisation. Information on the membership dates of all OECD countries can be found at OECD Ratification Dates