Over half of temporary employees in Poland come from outside the EU

According to recent data compiled by Eurostat, Poland has the highest share of non-EU temporary workers in the European Union. In 2019, as much as 53% of all people employed on temporary or short-term contracts in Poland came from outside the EU. The rest of the temporary workers were native-born.

Spain and Cyprus came second and third in the Eurostat table, employing respectively 38% and 33% of temporary workers from outside the EU, and followed by Portugal (29%), Sweden (26%) and the Netherlands (25%). On the other end of the chart, Estonia (2%), Latvia (4%), Austria (8%) and Ireland (10%) had the lowest share of temporary workers from non-EU countries.

Overall, around one-fifth (22%) of all third-country nationals working in the EU in 2019 were employed on temporary contracts. By comparison, only around 15% of workers born in a different EU member state and 13% of native-born workers were employed on short-term contracts.

Eurostat has also revealed that in 2019, the highest share of temporary workers from other EU member states was observed in Spain (29%), Portugal (24%), Greece (23%) and Italy (21%), and the lowest in Hungary and Ireland (both 6%), Austria (7%), Luxembourg, Cyprus and Slovenia (9%).

As regards native-born employees, the highest share of employees on temporary contracts in the total number of workers was observed in Spain (24 %), Poland (21%), Portugal (19%) and Croatia (18%), the lowest in Lithuania and Romania (1%), Estonia, Latvia (3%) and Bulgaria (4%).

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Source: Eurostat