Part-Time Employment in Central and Eastern Europe: A Cross-Country Analysis

This chapter explores part-time employment in Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) as compared to Western Europe. The aim is to examine the relationship between part-time work and labour utilisation in CEE, and to evaluate whether a potential expansion of part-time employment may facilitate growth in labour utilisation. The analyses on panel data identify the main determinants of part-time employment and the key factors that limit it in CEE. The results indicate that part-time employment of prime-aged men was largely driven by business cycle trends, expanding mostly at the expense of full-time positions and had no significant relationship to labour market inactivity in CEE. In contrast, for both young and older workers, part-time employment had a positive relationship to the employment rate; it was often a viable option to inactivity and may bring about higher labour utilisation. Further, our results suggest that, so far, the growth in prime-aged female part-time work was mainly at the expense of a shrinking pool of the inactive and was positively related to the total prime-aged female employment rate and labour participation in CEE.