Part-time employment in Lower Austria

Part-time employment has rapidly increased during the last decades. Nowadays it is the prior strategy of women to balance work and family life. Therefore the female part-time rate in Austria is among the highest of all European Member States. Previous studies show, that a high percentage of part-time employees would like to increase their working hours, an indication that involuntary part-time plays an important role. Although part-time work is the most frequent variation of the standard full-time employment (nearly half of the female employees work part-time), it is still treated as a special form of work, resulting in insufficient social and pension security benefits.

The study at hand wants to examine the development and effects of part-time employment in Lower Austria. It focuses on questions about reasons for part-time employment, people affected in different branches and individual possibilities seen to change the working hours.