EU working‑conditions survey

Eurofound published its European Working Conditions Survey 2024 on April 14, offering a new cross-border snapshot of how people work in 35 European countries. (eurofound.europa.eu) The survey is Eurofound’s eighth edition since 1990, and the agency said it is based on more than 35,000 interviews that lasted about 45 minutes each. The overview report covers the 27 European Union member states, Norway, Switzerland, and six candidate or potential candidate countries. (eurofound.europa.eu) Eurofound said the 2024 round measures job quality across seven areas: earnings, prospects, skills and discretion, working time, work intensity, social environment, and physical environment. It also tracks work-life balance, employment security, health, well-being, and sustainability. (eurofound.europa.eu) The release lands as the European Commission prepares a Quality Jobs Roadmap with employers and unions, a policy push Eurofound linked in 2025 to fair wages, training, and job transitions. Eurofound’s 2025 first-findings paper said job quality is tied to labour-force participation, productivity, health, and skills use. (eurofound.europa.eu) Eurofound said the 2024 data show progress in some parts of working life, including shorter hours on average, wider access to flexible schedules, and more training and skill development at work. The same first-findings paper also said newer risks are showing up alongside those gains. (eurofound.europa.eu) Among those newer risks, Eurofound said heat exposure is affecting more workers, sedentary jobs are creating health risks, and gender gaps in job quality remain. It also said some sectors, including financial services, have a substantial share of workers dealing with algorithmic management, where software helps assign, monitor, or pace work. (eurofound.europa.eu) The survey also follows changes in where work happens. Eurofound said one in five workers now do telework, a shift that can increase flexibility while also blurring the line between work time and private life. (eurofound.europa.eu) Methodology is part of the story this year. Eurofound said it ran the main 2024 survey in person and, for the first time, tested an online questionnaire in parallel to see whether future trend tracking can be maintained with new collection methods. (eurofound.europa.eu) Eurofound has already released the microdata through the United Kingdom Data Service and put up a public data explorer, which means researchers and policymakers can move past headline findings to country, sector, and occupation-level comparisons. The agency said a follow-up survey round also started after the main fieldwork. (eurofound.europa.eu) For now, the new report gives the European Union and its neighbors a fresh baseline on pay, hours, pressure, safety, and flexibility at work, using one survey designed to be comparable across borders and over time. (eurofound.europa.eu)