Employmentweb_low

EmpLoymEnT, work, And HEALTH inEquALiTiES - a global perspective
It needs to be emphasised that the slight upturn in jobs with
formal contracts was recorded mainly on the strength of
temporary work contracts: only 4% of the jobs created between
2002 and 2005 came with a permanent contract. as it is shown in
Figure 6, informal hiring is not the exclusive domain of lowproductivity
sectors. Only about 25% of wage workers have a
formal contract in those low-productivity sectors, while the figure
is about 54% in medium- and high-productivity sectors.
Furthermore, employers are more likely to have a formal contract
with their male workers (52%) than their female workers (46%). In
2002, approximately 40% of female workers with a formal contract
also had a permanent contract. In 2005, this only applied to 30% of
those female workers. This data shows that during the regional
upturn in employment, there has been a strong decrease in
permanent contracts for women. For the region as a whole, in 2005
there were 20% fewer women with permanent contracts than in
2002 (EClaC, 2007).
In wealthy geographical regions such as the European Union,
data on the spread of permanent full-time employment is available,
i.e., employees who do not have fixed-term contracts of limited
duration. In the EU, about 235 million people were employed in the
31 countries analysed in the IV European Survey on Working
Conditions (Parent-Thirion, Fernández Macías, Hurley, &
Vermeylen, 2007). Data show, however, large variations across the
EU (Figure 7). Half of those workers are concentrated in just five
countries (Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain), and there are
large differences in employment, the participation of women in the
workforce, and in the use of part-time work. all those differences in
labour market indicators may have a large impact on working
conditions, health and health inequalities.
In the EU-27, 78% of employees report holding a contract of
indefinite term. However, substantial differences exist between
countries: twice as many respondents in luxembourg and Belgium
(90% and 89% respectively) hold indefinite contracts as in Cyprus
and Malta (46% and 50% respectively). In terms of country groups,
a higher-than-average proportion of respondents in continental
countries (85%) hold indefinite contracts, while the lowest
proportion is found in Ireland and the UK and southern European
countries: 68% and 70%, respectively. In the candidate countries,
the majority of employees have no employment contract (60%),
while 28% of them have an indefinite-term contract (Parent-
Thirion et al., 2007).
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