Less People in the UK Work Full-Time

As new data from the Office for National Statistics released today indicates, full-time employment has been declining among employees in the UK over the past 15 years. According to a report by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, an increasing variety of other types of work (agency work, temporary work, zero hours contracts or gig economy work) has changed the ‘traditional’ patterns of work. These ‘atypical’ work models can be mainly linked to an increasingly flexible labour market and a high-rise in the self-employment rate (15 percent of total employment in 2016).

Another contributing factor however, is the steadily growing number of part-time workers, of which a vast majority (70.7 percent) has stated that they do not want a full-time job. When it comes to international terms, the UK has a significantly higher rate (24 percent) of part-time workers than most other countries while the average of EU member states lies at 17.2 percent (2015).