A Dutch Employee Is Thirteen Times More Likely to Be on a Temporary Contract Than a Lithuanian

What a temporary contract is, and what it is not

An employee is counted as temporary if their job has an agreed end date: a fixed-term contract, a seasonal engagement, a replacement post, an agency placement with a defined term.

Across the EU in 2025, 11.5% of employees aged 20 to 64 held one. The national figures run from 22.3% to 1.7%.

A ranking of legal systems

The spread here is thirteen to one, which is far wider than differences in unemployment, wages or economic performance between the same countries. That alone suggests the indicator is measuring something other than labour market conditions.

What it is largely measuring is how each Member State's employment law is written: how easily a permanent contract can be ended, what a fixed-term contract may be used for, how many times it may be renewed and after how long it converts to a permanent one.

Where dismissal from a permanent job is difficult and costly, employers use fixed terms to preserve flexibility, and the temporary share rises. Where dismissal is comparatively straightforward, a permanent contract carries less risk and there is less reason to avoid offering one.

The Netherlands and Spain

The Netherlands records 22.3%, the highest in the Union. Spain records 14.9%, Poland 15.2% and Portugal 14.8%.

Spain's position is the one with the longest history. Its temporary share was for years the highest in the Union by a wide margin, and a 2021 labour reform restricted the grounds on which fixed-term contracts could be used. The rate has fallen substantially since, and Spain now sits third rather than first — a rare case where a specific legal change is visible in a European indicator.

That the Netherlands has taken the top position is the counterpoint. It is a country with low unemployment, high employment and the Union's largest part-time share, and it makes heavier use of temporary contracts than any other Member State.

The low end

Lithuania records 1.7%, Romania 1.8%, Bulgaria 2.5%, Latvia 2.5% and Estonia 2.9%.

Seven Member States are below 5%, and all seven are in central and eastern Europe.

A low temporary share is often read as a sign of secure employment, and here it should not be. In several of these Member States, dismissal from a permanent contract is comparatively straightforward, which makes a permanent contract less permanent than the same words would imply further west. The instrument employers elsewhere achieve with a fixed term is available inside the standard contract.

Why the indicator is still worth having

None of that makes the measure useless. It identifies where a two-tier labour market exists — where a protected group of permanent employees coexists with a larger group cycling through fixed terms — and that division has real consequences for training, mortgages and household formation.

It does mean a low figure and a secure workforce are not the same thing, and a ranking of temporary contracts is not a ranking of job security.