Rush hour in Amsterdam.
Statistically, about one out of every two of these workers is
a part time employee.
The Netherlands is Europe's capital of part time work.
Almost half the population works less than 35 hours a week and can
generally afford it.
The question is, can the country?
Labor shortages are already hitting hard and workforces
are getting smaller.
And it's not just the Netherlands.
Germany, Austria and Switzerland are facing similar trends.
Now we're in the situation our society's over ageing.
We have 200.000 open positions in Austria.
Yet many employees are pushing to work less.
How does that add up?
We'll look at how relationships with work are changing in wealthier
European countries, and what that means for an era
of Labor shortages.
Will workers begin to raise their hours?
What's the reason that you want to work for these?
What do you need to work full time?
Or will they push for more free time?
I think that the more time that you can make for yourself, for
your personal projects, for your personal life, I think it can
be really interesting.
Will Europe work more in the future or will it work less that's coming
up on business beyond?
Europe's labor landscape has changed in recent decades.
Not that long ago, the idealized household in many European
countries look like this.
One partner worked, typically the man, the other stayed at home
to care for the children.
And of course, that was supposed to be the woman.
Especially if you look at a householder.
So it used to be the case that women were not working at all
would be perhaps in the 50s.
Suzanne Bijkerk is an economist with Rabobank in Utrecht.
So you could be fired here in the Netherlands when you got
married.
And then you saw that the man was working and was working 40
hours a week.
Now things look rather different.
Women's participation in the workforce has grown
significantly across Europe in recent decades.
That's also helped make workforces bigger.
The EU remains at near peak employment of around 75%,
its highest level since recording began in 2009.
Several economies, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland,
have recently been at or near record employment rates.
Those characteristics of European modern workforce that is larger,
that is more integrated, they owe a lot to the popularity of part
time work and the embrace of part time work really began here
in the Netherlands.
Unemployment was much higher in the Netherlands in the late 70s
and early 80s.
The country encouraged part time work as part of a series of broader
reforms, and it helped in the sense that more people entered
the market, especially women.
Unemployment fell.
Germany took a similar route in the 90s.
Reunified country suddenly had a lot of workers without jobs.
Part time became a feature of more and more labor agreements.
The Netherlands and Germany later created laws protecting part time,
basically making it more difficult for an employer to reject
an employee request to work that way.
And part time caught on.
In other countries, Austria and Switzerland, for example, we're now
roughly 1/3 of employees is working less than full time.
But part time is most popular among women, who still have the majority
of care responsibilities at home.
And less flexibility with full time.
Now the Netherlands has one of the highest shares of women
in the workforce.
It's important to note that the Netherlands and some of
the other countries we've been talking about are a bit more
conservative.
On the one hand, that is, women traditionally stayed at home to
care for children and they didn't work.
Another difference is that the Netherlands is wealthier
than other European countries.
In other words, it's more likely that in a Dutch household with two
workers, one is working part time out of choice.
I think that's more so perhaps than in other countries in the US where
pension is not arranged and there's no.
Umm, now if you'll state pensioner in that sense, here in
the Netherlands, that's more arranged, so there's more social.
Net to catch people when things go bad and when you get unemployed and
and that makes that people have a more comfortable position.
In that sense.
There are also disincentives to working more taxes for example,
among major economies, European countries have some of the highest
tax rates on 2nd earners with children and their downsides
to part time.
It means lower income and workers, again predominantly women, often
don't return to full time work.
In the end, whether for cultural or financial reasons or a combination,
many households in the Netherlands feel comfortable with a 1 1/2
earner household with one person working full time and
the other part time.
Part time work has given employees and households more flexibility,
essentially more options to balance work with care obligations they
have at home, for children or for family members.
So what's wrong with that?
Actually nothing, but it does mean that there's less work being
done per person.
The average part time worker in the EU puts in around 22 hours a
week.
And look at this.
This is the average number of working hours per worker annually
in major economies around the world.
And guess who's at the bottom?
Wealthier European nations.
Germany isn't just at the very bottom.
It's 400 hours below the OECD average.
Now that makes sense when we consider part time work.
And again, that's not really a problem as long as
workforces are big.
But they're shrinking, and this is happening across Western
economies right now.
Look at how this population pyramid for the EU changes from 2022 to
2100, Noticeably shrinking.
The number of working age individuals in EU states is
expected to decline 20%.
Labor is going to be scarce, very scarce in the future.
So this is not a one off.
It's not like 10 years from now we're out of this and then it's
gone, now it's it's here to stay.
She's talking about the Netherlands, but the same
applies to other European countries as well.
Economists warn that there's no easy fix to
the coming labor problems.
It's going to take more than migration, for example, to deal
with what's ahead.
And to see how part time plays into the coming shortages, you
can look here.
Hi, I'm Maartje Lak, the principal of De Kleine Nicolaas, a Dutch
primary school in Amsterdam.
Education is one sector where shortages are already bad.
In the Netherlands, also in Germany.
Is not very good.
The celery is bare.
You've got a lot of problems with the parents, so that doesn't help.
When applicants come to marches school.
Many want to work part time for different reasons, but with
a smaller candidate pool, that's a problem.
Always start a conversation with her.
What's the reason that you want to work for these?
What do you need to work full time?
I tell them the the advantages for them, but also for their salary,
but also for the long term that they're also aware about
the choices and the consequences they make.
Healthcare is another sector we're finding people is
becoming more difficult.
There's a shortage of people.
It's a low productive labour.
So it's it's it's just a heavy, it's physically.
Intensive, especially health care and demand for health care is only
going to rise in the years ahead.
Societies are getting older, remember.
Caring for children and family members is the number one reason
employees give for why they work part time.
Again, this is overwhelmingly women.
So does that mean that if we provide more care options for them
that more will go into the workforce?
Well, it's actually not that simple.
Even a lot of women tell us that they started working.
They joined the labour force with a contract of 16 hours like 30
years ago, and then they never changed.
Wieteke Graven works with Dutch healthcare organizations who are
struggling with labor shortages.
Very elaborate shift structures, especially in healthcare, often
make part time more attractive to both employees and
employers, she says.
But there's also become something of a broader cultural expectation
for part time.
And we asked them, why did you never change?
And they say, well yeah, that's simply the way it is.
So it is really a deeply ingrained norm.
And now, of course, because if we have the labour market shortages,
all of a sudden everybody starts to doubt whether this is actually
the right norm.
It's a hard topic because it's everyone is used to it.
So yeah, we all work part time and as a mom, a full time working mom,
you often get a question.
You work full time, but why do you work full time and?
So I don't know.
It's it's it's hard to change.
But part time is about more than just working moms.
My Name is Thaïs I'm an architect and I work 28 hours.
Thaïs Zuchetti isn't caring for children or family members, but she
works part time anyways.
Sometimes my mom sends me a message on a Friday and she's like, oh, I'm
sorry, you're working.
I'm like, no, I never work.
On Fridays.
Thaïs worked 28 hours while finishing up her master's degree.
Her firm asked her to come back up to 32 hours.
Still part time, but she doesn't mind.
I feel that right now with 28 hours, I earn enough to live
OK, let's say.
And the idea is that if I would continue working 28 hours, then I
could, let's say, develop maybe my hobby as an illustrator into
a side gig.
But with 32 hours, of course there will be more salary in the end of
the month, with the advantage that I still have the Fridays free,
so I can still work on my illustrations and who knows where
that will take me.
Let's be clear, Tice's work is quite different from, say,
nursing or teaching.
But economists say that underlying desire to have more free time
is visible across wealthier European countries.
I have the feeling that people started to realize that maybe work
is not everything, and maybe being extremely rich is not everything.
That's right now it's more about how you feel mentally, how you
dedicate time for your family or for the things that you actually
truly love doing.
In other words, falling work hours isn't just about caretaking, it's
also about a more general push for work life balance across
the entire workforce.
Just look at Germany.
The country's steel workers have pushed for a four day work week in
recent negotiations, despite many of them already working 35
hours full time.
Rail workers shut down train lines earlier this year in their push for
a 35 hour work week.
This is the tricky part for policymakers.
Labour has more leverage, but it's not just higher wages
that it wants.
And while some industries may do all right with fewer workers, for
other sectors that's not an option.
Distinguishing where fewer hours works from where it doesn't.
That can be difficult.
This is Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer here.
He's speaking informally to a group of supporters near
Salzburg last year.
He's unhappy about criticisms that his government isn't doing
enough for poor families.
Why isn't the part time quota rising?
Why is it not rising, not even among women
without care responsibilities?
When I need money, I get a job.
The chancellor jumbled his words a bit, but his message was clear.
He finds Part Time's popularity.
Problematic.
We're turning one job into two – 20 hours, 20 hours, that's
40 hours together.
But you have two employees who are working it.
Now we're in the situation our society is over ageing.
We have 200.000 open positions in Austria.
The debate over working hours is growing in a lot of these countries
and in some cases it's getting rather pointed because for many
people this comes down to a fundamental question.
Do people still have the will to work?
But labor economists say that's unfair.
More people are working, after all, and it's possible that some of
the traditional incentives to work more might be changing.
You still want to live in a nice house and that you have to live
with your parents until you're 30, simply said, because the labour
might or the housing market doesn't offer anything.
I think if they could work more and then would be able to buy
that house, if they like their parents or their grandparents were,
I think they would.
But the fact that it's not possible.
So I think the choice for free time is not.
I think it's exaggerated, perhaps a bit.
I think they they still want to work and they still want to have
a good job and they would like to live in a house, but I think that's
not very apparent perhaps from the data at the moment.
Other part timers, meanwhile, might be very much open to
increasing their hours.
It's also a completely different choice whether you go from 24 to 26
or you go from 40 to 32.
And I think there are really different groups.
And sometimes when we talk about part time, it's just one
big container term.
The question now facing governments is how do you make that extra hour
or two or three of work worth it for employees?
Both the Netherlands and Switzerland have pushed
for more childcare.
With mixed results, the Swiss effort has been tabled by
the National Council in Bern and the Netherlands has postponed
its childcare promise by two years, citing budget cuts.
Countries have also struggled to change those tax measures
we talked about.
Germany has so far held off on scrapping its income splitting tax
rules for married couples, which essentially incentivizes 1 earner
to work less.
In Austria, a debate over lowering wage taxes for businesses
continues to simmer.
And then there's the employer side.
That's where Gravin has experience.
She's the founder of Ed Potential Pakin in Amsterdam.
It helps companies, especially in healthcare, approach their own
part time workers about increasing hours.
Her team sits down with employers to understand scheduling, taxes,
everything they can take to their own employees.
And it's not just about wages, according to Graven.
The number one reason, and that has been so for four years, is I
enjoy my job.
I want to work more hours as long as I enjoy it.
So it's interesting that notes financial incentives are not
the most important drivers to work more hours.
Scheduling is actually one of the biggest challenges, she says.
But employers are becoming more flexible there.
There are quite a lot of teachers that have children themselves.
And they say, well, I wouldn't mind working an extra day, but then I
would like to start a little bit later because, you know, I have to
drop off my kids at school.
What you've done So for a long time, that's, you know, a school
director said no way have we started 8:30 and you
better be there.
And what you see happening now is because there's such
a shortage of teachers.
That you see their willingness to say, well, why don't you start at
9:00 or at 9:30 and we'll make sure that Ted, there's somebody else who
receives the children and looks after them for the first hour.
That is something that is happening because of the
tight labour markets.
And I think that this, this term of flexibility and that really goes
both ways, is super important to make this work.
Remember Matcha, her school district worked with Cravin's team
to help their own conversations with teachers about going
up in hours.
And no is also possible.
So it's not that you are forced to work full time, no.
But what are the needs and what can we arrange?
And if not, maybe in the near future?
But I think.
In Dutch there’s a saying it's a seat that you plant?
So it's not that you just fix it right away.
This is really a story about personal needs and the needs
of a society.
In countries like the Netherlands, people can really work more to
their own preferences.
But that does have consequences.
For the overall labor market and for society.
Many of us may indeed end up working less, especially in fields
where technology makes our jobs easier.
But other sectors will still need more hours from fewer workers.
How will they get them?
And what happens when companies or sectors compete with one
another for an ever shrinking talent pool?
It's also a story about women, about how they work now and how
they're going to work in the future, much of that potential
for more work and more hours.
Belongs to women.
Working in part time positions, which leads to other questions like
how families organize themselves and what role the state plays in
providing care options.
That's all we have time for now.
For this episode of Business Beyond, we thank you for watching
and we hope to see you soon.