According to the EU's 2016 Employment and Social Developments report, after the severe economic crisis, female employment showed positive growth in most Member States between 2008 and 2015. Nevertheless, the employment rate of women in the EU in 2015 is still significantly below that of men (64.3% compared with 75.9%), but the gap has diminished since 2008 in all Member States except Romania. Since 2011, the gap has increased in Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Slovenia, Hungary, Ireland and Romania: though in all of these except the last three, the gap remains smaller than the EU 28 average. The biggest gap is in Malta (female employment rate 27.8 pps lower than male employment rate), followed by Italy (20 pps lower), Greece (18 pps lower), Romania (17.5 pps lower) and the Czech Republic (16.6 pps lower). The smallest difference is to be found in Finland (female rate 2.1 pps lower), Lithuania (2.4 pps lower), Latvia (4.1 pps lower) and Sweden (4.2 pps lower).

Industry’s share of total employment is by far the highest in the Czech Republic, followed by Slovakia and Poland, while Cyprus, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom recorded the lowest share of employment in industry. In all Member States this share is decreasing.

Women who have employees constitute the smallest group of self-employed at just below 8% for the EU as a whole, ranging from less than 5% in Romania, Cyprus, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic to 13% in Hungary.

Compared with 2007, Germany and Poland recorded the biggest decreases in long-term unemployment in 2015. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta and Romania also recorded decreases – though of less than 1 percentage point.

Job vacancy rates varied strongly across Member States in 2015, ranging from 2.5% in the United Kingdom, and 2.4% in Belgium and Germany to less than 0.5% in Latvia (in 2014). Cyprus recorded the sharpest decrease between 2008 and 2015, followed by the Czech Republic.

With a Gini-coefficient close to or below 0.25, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland are the countries with the lowest inequality.

In 2014, Estonia recorded the widest gender pay gap (among the Member States for which the data are available) at 28%, though this gap is less than in 2007. Slovenia recorded the smallest gender pay gap (just below 3%), followed by Malta, Italy, Poland, Luxembourg and Belgium. In Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and Slovakia the gender pay gap was above 20%.

Over the period 2005-2015, the real values of net minimum incomes to their recipients deteriorated in a few countries; slightly improved (i.e. increased less than 10 percentage points over the monitored 10 year period) in most countries; and improved significantly in a few Member States (Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Lithuania. Relative increases in net minimum income (more than 40 percentage points) benefited single persons rather than families with children in Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

The proportion of part-time workers in the EU increased in all but two countries (Croatia and Poland) during recent years, on average from 16.8% to 19.0%, a slightly higher increase than the US and OECD averages. The increase has been especially strong among men: the share of men working part-time has almost tripled in Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia, and more than doubled in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Ireland, Spain and Malta.

In general, the cooperation between public and private employment services in Europe can be classified into three broad categories: well established (for example in France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands); developing (as in Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain); and limited (in Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example).

In answer to the question: “Do you think you have the computer skills you need to do your job well?” the data show large cross-country differences. While the EU average for positive answers was 7.54%, countryspecific values range from 16.2% in Norway, 11.1% in Finland and 9.9% in Denmark, to only 3.2% in the Czech Republic. Also, as for gross investment in ICT since 2000, calculated as the flow in three different types of fixed assets: computer hardware, computer software and databases and telecommunications equipment, steady growth can be observed for almost all the countries, notably France, UK and Belgium. The trend only turned negative in Greece and Hungary (there is some evidence of a negative trend also for the Czech Republic and Denmark).

Read the full report.

According to the ILO Global Wage Report 2016-2017, the estimates show that in the case of Estonia or the Czech Republic someone who earns the minimum wage receives about 37 or 38 per cent of what the median earner receives, while in Hungary, Portugal or France that ratio increases to more than 60 per cent. Most countries have a minimum wage somewhere between 45 and 60 per cent of the median wage.

Also, we can observe that in many countries there is some level of correspondence between a low level of wage inequality of individuals and a low level of wage inequality between enterprises (as, for example, in Sweden or Norway) or a higher level of inequality of both types (such as in the United Kingdom and Romania), though in some countries there is a large difference between the two types of inequality (as in the Czech Republic or Portugal, with wage inequality between individuals much greater than wage inequality between enterprises, the report says).

Meanwhile, the Confederation of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic held a conference on current issues in the labour law. Presentations in Czech are available here. The introduction of the fifth week of holiday would cost Czech companies 35.5bn CZK a year. Also, 71% of foreigners working in the Czech Republic come from the neighbouring countries. Or, it is estimated that the Moravian-Silesian region will need 4,000 new employees per year in manufacturing by 2020.