Time-limited job contracts in Germany and Europe

By JJB

In Germany, the amount of employed people increased from 38,7 million in 1991 to 41,6 million in 2012 (including all kinds of employment : full or part-time, limited or unlimited contracts, etc.), according to the German Federal Agency for Civic Education :

Development of employment in Germany. NB: Figures not limited to German nationals or residents. Source: Federal Agency for Civic Education
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Nevertheless, one may ask: What about the qualitative evolution of employment?

Indeed, it has frequently been reported that unlimited job contracts have become increasingly rare in Western societies. This can, for the example, be illustrated by the following graph, showing that, among the German population, the percentage of those with an unlimited full-time job contract fell from 45% in 1992 to 38% in 2007 (and might probably have decreased even further since then, due to the economic crises from 2008 on).

Part of Germans with unlimited full-time work contract. Source: Statista
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However, those figures are not backed up by a precise definition of the comparison's references.
For a more differentiated approach, the following graph gives some interesting insights in terms of absolute figures. These statistics from the Federal Agency for Civic Education show an increase of about +1 million employees with time-limited job contracts: from about 1,8 million in 1991 to about 2,8 million in 2011. Moreover, this graph also shows some other forms of what the Agency calls "untypical forms of employment", which are on the rise. For example, one of those categories is part-time employment, which is much more common among women than among men, as can be seen in this graph.

"Untypical forms of employment", according to Federal Agency for Civic Education ; (thousands)
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However, according to another source, for those who have a time-limited job contract, the risk of very short contract lengths is particularly low in Germany: a very little share is below 3 months, while there is a considerable share of limited work contracts of more than 12 months. This means that time-limited job contracts are more stable in Germany than in all the other countries which are quoted here. At first sight, this may sound surprising in the context of rising figures of flexible work and limited-term contracts in Germany (for example, the newspaper FAZ interpreted this as a contradiction).
Yet, the two aspects might in fact very well go together, since longer contract terms might be a way for employers to counter turnover rates which become too high. Moreover, the degree of overall use of time-limited contracts has got an impact on the pertinence of this comparison between countries. Hence, absolute figures would be a helpful additional reference here, in order to interpret those relative figures with even more accuracy.
In any case, further research would be required in order to assess those questions in more detail.

Comparison of the length of limited-term contracts in selected European countries. Source: Statista
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