Credit: Statec
On the occassion of Labour Day, annually celebrated on 1 May, Luxembourg's statistics agency, Statec, has published an overview of the Luxembourg workforce.
According to Statec, of the 458,000 employees in Luxembourg in 2021, 46% are cross-border workers (half of whom come from France).
Trade, transport, accommodation and catering activities had more than 100,000 employees in 2021, while one in five employee worked in administration and other public services (including for example education, public health and social action). Business services activities as well as financial and insurance activities are also important sectors for salaried employment.
Decrease in working hours over time
Long-term data showed that during industrialisation in the 19th century, people worked very long hours, but later this working time decreased considerably, especially in developed countries.
The first legal regulation of working hours in Luxembourg took effect in 1876 with the law on the work of children and women, limiting, among other things, the working day to eight hours for children under twelve years old. Almost 100 years later the 40-hour work week was introduced by law in 1975.
The fall in the annual number of working hours over the last decades is explained on the one hand by shorter working days, but also by the increase in the number of days off.
The increase in the proportion of part-time employees is another major reason for the reduction in working hours. Part-time work has developed strongly and its share have tripled in 40 years within the workforce. Its evolution, especially on the women's side (four out of five part-time jobs are held by women), has strongly contributed to the feminisation of the workforce.
Teleworking is taking hold
The proportion of employees using telework jumped during the confinement in the second quarter of 2020, where it reached a historic record of 52% employees in Luxembourg. After this peak, the percentage of telework decreased somewhat while remaining at a high level, which is about twice that of before the COVID-19 pandemic (20% in 2019). In the fourth quarter of 2021, 38% of workers worked from home. Luxembourg was also at the forefront of telework in Europe in 2020.
In the branches of offshore activities (mainly international institutions), financial activities, information and communication (ICT) and scientific and technical activities, a very large proportion of employees worked remotely in 2020 after the first confinement. In contrast, the percentage of teleworkers in the health and social work sector has remained very low. Sectors with many office workers (white collar workers), which had already had high levels of teleworking before the pandemic, also saw the strongest growth during the COVID-19 crisis. Public administration is an exception in this regard. Public administration and also the branch of financial and insurance activities stand out for an exceptional growth in telework, where the percentage of telework has more than quadrupled. This is not the case, for example, for transport activities, trade, catering and health. These are the branches that require interactions with customers or patients and where tasks cannot be performed remotely to the same extent.
Employees fairly satisfied with their situation at work
According to the results of the labor force survey, the vast majority of workers resident in Luxembourg are happy with their situation at work. Six out of seven employees reported satisfaction (86%) while only 4% were “not at all”. A third of people in employment said that they are “completely satisfied” (35%). Luxembourg is among the European countries with a high level of current job satisfaction.
However, the level of satisfaction varies greatly depending on the working conditions. Employees working overtime, having shift work and a long commute to work are less often satisfied with their situation.
Half of the employees are covered by a collective labor agreement
53% of employees in the private sector are covered by a collective labor agreement (convention collective de travail - CCT). This rate has been stable since 2010.
In the public sector, almost 100% of employees are covered either by the status of civil servant/ public employee (State or municipal) which can be assimilated to a CCT.
The majority of employees are also covered by a CCT in administrative and support service activities (such as building cleaning companies, security, etc.), health and social action (e.g. by agreements important in the healthcare and hospital sectors), transport, construction and even the manufacturing industry.
In the financial sector, just over half of employees are covered (executive positions are excluded). Four out of ten employees are covered in trade and only two out of ten in the hospitality industry.
Overall, CCTs cover both men and women, with older employees being slightly more covered than younger employees.
On the other hand, a significant gap is observed according to the level of education and occupations: higher-level graduates and “white-collar” type occupations are indeed much less covered than less qualified employees and blue-collar workers.
Compared to other European countries, the Grand Duchy finds itself in a group of countries (with e.g. the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Portugal) in which collective bargaining plays an important role but does not not cover all branches in the same way (45% to 89% coverage). In some countries, on the other hand, almost all (more than 90%) of employees are covered by a CCT (e.g. Italy, France, Ireland, Finland, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Spain), whereas in at the other extreme, CCTs only affect less than a third of employees in the Baltic countries (Hungary, Bulgaria or Poland, for example).
The pay gap between men and women is close to zero in the Grand Duchy
The pay gap between men and women (Gender Pay Gap, GPG) has fallen sharply in Luxembourg over the past 20 years.
The unadjusted GPG has indeed halved in the market economy (B-N branches), where it fell from 18.9% in 2002 to 9.7% in 2021.
Across the economy as a whole, there is equality between the average hourly wages of men and women (GPG close to zero).
Luxembourg has the lowest pay gap in the European Union (EU). In 2020, the GPG for the whole of the EU (excluding public administration) is estimated at 13%.
Nevertheless, the differences in Luxembourg are still significant in certain branches of activity, such as financial activities, real estate activities, specialised scientific and technical activities or even trade. In other branches, such as public administration, health and social work or even construction, the GPG is zero or even in favour of women.
However, Statec recalled that these wage gaps result to a large extent from professional segregation of men and women who work in different branches and professions, other reasons mentioned in the literature being, for example, career interruptions as well as the "glass ceiling".
