right, you're up to day now, but we'll be back soon with more headlines. in the meantime, check us out online dw, dot com. beardsley, thanks joining the, the the is, it is someplace apparently more peaceful than ever on the move world wide and such a base in life. but as i suggested in cardboard, that's almost always, that's sort of what i find out about baby story info, migraines, rush hour in amsterdam. statistically about one out of every 2 of these workers is a part time employee benevolence as your capital. a part time works almost half the population works less than 35 hours

a week and can generally afford it. the question is, can the country labor shortages are already hitting hard and work forces are getting smaller? and it's not just the netherlands, germany, austria and switzerland are facing similar trends. now we're in the situation. our society is over aging. we have 200000 open positions in australia. you have many employees are pushing to work less. how does that add up? we'll look at how relationships with work are changing in wealthy or european countries. and what that means for an era of labor shortages will workers begin to raise their hours? what's the reason that you want to work for days, and what do you need to work full time? or will they push for more free time? the more time that you can make for yourself, for personal practice, for personal life, i think it can be really interesting. will europe work more in the future or will work less that's coming up on business beyond to europe's labor landscape has

changed in recent decades. not that long ago, the idealized household in many european countries looked like this one partner worked typically the man, the other stayed at home to care for the children. and of course, that was supposed to be the woman. especially if you're looking at a household so, so just to be the case that women were not working titles with the pumps in the fifty's, susanna by can cause an economist with rabo buck in budapest. so you could be fired here in the mountains when you both married. and then you saw that the line was working. it was working 40 hours a week. now things look rather different. women's participation in the workforce has grown significantly across europe in recent decades. that's also helped make workforce is bigger. the you remains in near peak employment of around 75 percent. it's highest level since recording began in 2009. several economies including germany, austria and switzerland have recently been at or near record employment rates.

those characteristics of yours modern workforce that is larger, that it's more integrated. they owe a lot to the popularity of part time work. and the embrace of part time work really begin here. and then the unemployment was much higher in the netherlands in the late seventies. and early eighties, the country encouraged part time work as part of a series of broader reforms. and it helped, in a sense that more people entered the market. especially women. unemployment fell. germany took a similar route in the ninety's. the newly re unified country suddenly had a lot of workers without jobs. part time became a feature of more and more labor agreements. the netherlands and jeremy later created laws protecting part time, basically making it more difficult for an employer to reject an employee request to work that way. and part time caught on in other countries, austria and switzerland, for example, were now roughly a 3rd of employees is working less than full time. but part time is most popular

among women who still have the majority of care responsibilities at home and less flexibility with the full time. now the netherlands as one of the highest shares of women in the workforce. it's important to note that the netherlands and some of the other countries we've been talking about are a bit more conservative. on the one hand, that is women traditionally stayed at home to care for children, and they didn't work. another difference is it, the netherlands is wealthier than other european countries. in other words, it's more likely that in a dutch household with 2 workers, one is working part time out of choice. that's more so perhaps than another country side of us where pension is not arranged and there is no real state pension in that sense. here in the netherlands, that's more range. so there's more social mets to catch people when things go back and when you get on employees and, and it makes the people have a more comfortable position in that sense. there are also this incentives to working more taxes. for example, among major economies. european countries have some of the highest tax rates on the

2nd earners with children and their downsides. the part time means lower income and workers again, predominately women often don't return to full time work in the ends, whether for cultural or financial reasons or a combination. many households in the netherlands feel comfortable with a one and a half or household with one person working full time. and the other part time part time work is given employees and households more flexibility, essentially more options to balance work with care obligations, they have it home for children or for family members. so what's wrong with that? actually nothing, but it does mean that there's less work being done per person. the average part time worker in the you puts in around 22 hours a week. and look at this, this, the average number of working hours per worker annually in major economies around the world. and guess who is at the bottom wealth your european nations. germany isn't just at the very bottom. it's 400 hours below the easy, the average of that makes sense when we consider part time work. and again,

that's not really a problem, as long as word forces are big, but they're shrinking. and this is happening across the western economies right now . look at how this population period for the change is from 2022 to 2100 noticeably shrinking. the number of working age individuals in each state is expected to decline. 20 percent of labor is going to be scars, very scars in the future. so this is not a one off, it's not like 10 years from now or out of this and then it's gone. now it's, it's here to stay. she's talking about the netherlands, but the same applies to other european countries as well. economist warren, that there's no easy fix to the coming labor problems. it's going to take more than migration, for example, to deal with what's the head, to see how part time plays into the coming shortages. you can look here. i, i march, you luck. the principal, if you had any class that your primary school in education is one sec,

there were shortages are already back in the netherlands. also in germany. it's not very good. the salaries that you go to another problem with the parents. so that doesn't help when applicants come to much of school, many wants to work part time for different reasons. but with a smaller candidate pool, that's a problem. i always start a conversation with her. what's the reason that you want to work for these? and what do you need to work full time? i tell them the, the advantages for them, but also for their salary, but also for the long term that they're also aware about the choices and the consequences they makes. health care is another sector we're finding people is becoming more difficult. there's a shortage of people. it's a low productive labor. so it's it's, it's just a heavy, it's physically offensive, especially health care. and demand for health care is only going to rise in the years ahead. societies are getting older. remember caring for children and family

members is the number one reason employees get for why they work part time again, this is overwhelmingly women. so does that mean that if we provide more care options for them, the more will go into the workforce? well, it's actually not that simple. even a lot of women tell us that they started working to join the labor force, but the contract of 16 hours, like 30 years ago. and they say never change the to drive and works with dutch healthcare organizations who are struggling with labor shortages. very elaborate shift structures, especially in health care, often make part time more attractive to both employees and employers. she says, but there's also become something of a broader cultural expectation for part time. we ask them, why did you never change? and they say, well yeah, that's simply the way that is. so it is really deeply angry norm. and now of course, because we have the labor market shortages, all of a sudden everybody starts doubt. whether this is actually the right norm. it's

a hard topic because it's everyone is used to it. so yeah, we all work part time and, and as a mom for full time working love, and you often get the question, how do you work full time? but why do you work full time and, and so i don't know it's it's, it's hard to change. but part time is about more than just working months. my name is titus. i'm an architect and i work 28 hours place. okay, isn't caring for children or family members, but she works part time. anyways. i love it. sends me a blanket on a friday. it's like, oh, i'm sorry you're working. i don't know. i never worked friday. price worked 28 hours while finishing up her master's degree. her firm asked her to come back up to 32 hours, still part time, but she doesn't mind. i feel that right now with 28 hours i earn enough to leave. okay, let's say. and the idea is that if i were to continue working 28 hours and then i could let's, i developed maybe my hobby as an illustrator into a side game. but um,

with 32 hours, of course that will be a more salary in the end of the month when they advantage that i still have the fridays free, so i can still work on my illustrations and who knows where that will take me. let's be clear, tice's work is quite different from say, nursing or teaching. but economists say that underlying desire to have more free time is visible across wealthier european countries. i have the feeling that people started to realize that maybe work is not everything and maybe being extremely rich is not everything. that's right. now it's meant more about how you feel, mentally, how are you, dedicate time for your family or front of things that you actually truly long throwing. in other words, falling work hours isn't just about care taking. it's also about a more general push for work life balance across the entire workforce. just look at germany. the country still workers have pushed rate for day work week and recent

negotiations. despite many of them already working 35 hours, full time rail workers shut down, train lines earlier this year in their push for 35 hour work week. this is the tricky part. the policy makers, labor has more leverage, but it's not just higher wages, but it wants. and while some industries may do, all right, with your workers, for other sectors, that's not an option. distinguishing where fewer hours works from where it doesn't, that can be difficult. this is altering, chances are called a home up here he's speaking informally to a group of supporters news out support last year. he's not happy about criticisms that his government isn't doing enough for poor families. why isn't the part time quarter rising? why is it not rising? not even among women without care responsibilities. when i need money, i get a job. the chancellor jumbled his words a bit, but his message was clear. he finds park times popularity,

problematic. we're turning one job into 220 hours 20 hours. that's 40 hours together, but you have 2 employees, we're working it. now we're in a situation our society's over aging. we have 200000 open positions in austria. the debate over working hours is growing and a lot of these countries, and in some cases it's getting rather pointed because for many people this comes down to a fundamental question. the people still have the will all to work. but labor economists say that's unfair, more people are working after all. and it's possible that some of the traditional incentives to work more might be changing. you still want to live in a nice house and that you have to live with your parents until you're 30 simply sad because the labor, my, or the housing market doesn't offer anything. i think if they could work more and then would be able to buy that house if the like their parents were or their grand parents were, i think they boards but the fact that it's not possible. so i think, i think the choice for a free time is, is not. i think it's exaggerates,

of perhaps a bit. i think they, they still want to work and they still want to have a good job and they would like to live in the house. but i think that's not very parents, perhaps from the data at the moment. other part timers, meanwhile, might be very much open to increasing their hours. it's also a completely different, a choice whether you go from 24 to 26 or you go for 4232 and i think there are really different groups. and sometimes we wanna, when we talk about the bar time, it's just one big container term. but the question now facing governments is, how do you make that extra hour or 2 or 3 of work worth it for employees? both the netherlands and switzerland have pushed for more child care with mixed results. this was effort has been tabled by the national council in band and the netherlands has postponed its child care promised by 2 years, citing budget cuts. countries. i've also struggled to change those tax measures. we talked about germany has so far held off on scrapping its income,

splitting tax rules for married couples, which essentially incentivizes one earner to work less. in austria, a debate over lowering wage taxes for businesses continues to summer. this is really a story about personal needs and the needs of a society. in countries like the netherlands, people can really work more to their own preferences. but that does have consequences for the overall labor market and for society. many of us may indeed end up working less, especially in fields where technology makes our jobs easier. but other sectors will still need more hours from fewer workers, how they get the up. and what happens when companies or sectors compete with one another for an ever shrinking talent pool? it's also story about women. it's about how they work now and how they're going to work for the future. punch of that potential for more work and more hours belongs to women. now working part time positions, which leads to other questions like how families organize themselves and what role the state plays and providing care options. and that's all we have time for for now

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