When it comes to temporary employment in the European Union, Spain leads the pack with 26.8% of employees on a temporary contract in 2017, according to data from Eurostat, the statistical body of the European Union.

Eurostat’s data found that in 2017, 27 million employees aged 15 to 64 in the EU had a temporary contract. This represents 14.3% of all employees in the EU. Eurostat added that in the last 15 years, temporary employment has fluctuated between 12.7% and 14.5% of all employees. The data includes all temporary workers, not just temporary agency workers.

In 2017, this proportion was slightly higher for women (14.8%) than for men (13.8%). It was also higher in the euro area (16.0%) than in the EU.

After Spain, Poland had the highest share of temporary contracts in the EU (26.1%). This was followed by Portugal (22.0%), the Netherlands (21.5%) and Croatia (20.6%).

Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the scale, temporary employees accounted for less than 2% of all employees in both Romania (1.2%) and Lithuania (1.7%).

Among demographics, last year in the EU, nearly 8 million young people, or almost half (43.9%) of employees aged 15 to 24, were employed under a temporary contract.

Across the EU Member States, more than seven in ten young employees (15-24) had a temporary contract in Spain (73.3%) and Slovenia (71.6%).  In contrast, the share of young people working under a temporary contract was less than 10% in Romania (4.1%), Latvia (6.7%) and Lithuania (6.8%).