Casual work: Characteristics and implications

Casual work, both intermittent and on-call, contributes to labour market flexibility and is therefore increasingly used across Europe. In some countries, practices go beyond the use of casual employment contracts to include other types of contracts and forms of self-employment. While it offers some advantages for both employers and workers, it is often discussed by policymakers at EU and national levels due to the observed negative consequences it has for some workers.

Impacts include economic insecurity and unpredictability of working time, which in turn affect workers’ health, well-being and social security. From a labour market perspective, casual work raises concerns about decent social inclusion of vulnerable groups, labour market segmentation and more general trends towards fragmentation of work and brain drain. Some policy responses have already been implemented to tackle these issues; further policy pointers are flagged in the report.