According to the ÖVP-affiliated Economic Association (WB), 90.4 percent of job openings in August were advertised as full-time positions.
9.6 percent were part-time jobs. This comes from the newly launched WB “Full-Time Radar.” Nationwide, a total of 160,306 jobs were advertised last month. The part-time employment rate for men and women stood at 31.5 percent in 2024, according to Statistics Austria.
“This discrepancy between available full-time positions and the part-time employment rate is increasingly becoming a brake on prosperity,” said WB Secretary General and ÖVP Member of Parliament Kurt Egger in a press release. He acknowledged that “it is undisputed that some people have to work part-time due to childcare, caregiving, or health reasons.”
Measures to increase the full-time employment rate demanded
The Economic Association is pushing for incentives for more working hours and nationwide childcare: “Now we need the right framework conditions and the will of the population to actually increase the full-time employment rate,” said the WB Secretary General.
Job postings advertised as “full- or part-time” are counted as full-time positions in the WB “Full-Time Radar,” according to information given to APA. For several years now, the WB has had the total number of open jobs and apprenticeships tracked monthly by the Public Employment Service (AMS) and online platforms such as karriere.at or willhaben.at through the IT firm Texterous, and publishes the WB “Job and Apprenticeship Monitor” based on these figures.
Second-highest part-time rate in the EU
Austria recently recorded the second-highest part-time employment rate among all 27 EU member states—behind the Netherlands and ahead of Germany. The part-time rate among employed women in 2024 was 51.1 percent, an increase of 0.5 percentage points compared to 2023. Among men, the part-time rate rose by 0.3 percentage points to 13.7 percent.
The debate around part-time work has flared up repeatedly in recent years. The ÖVP has criticized the high part-time rate in light of labor shortages, pointing to negative economic effects as well as financial losses for the social security system. The SPÖ, trade unions, and the Greens have argued that caregiving and childcare are the main reasons for part-time work. The FPÖ and NEOS have called for more performance incentives for full-time employment.
ÖVP sparked part-time debate
Former Labor Minister Martin Kocher (ÖVP) had already pushed in early 2023 to make part-time work less attractive for young people without caregiving obligations or health restrictions. In 2024, the ÖVP floated the idea of a full-time bonus. In summer 2025, ÖVP Economics Minister Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer reignited the political and media debate with his remark about a “lifestyle part-time wave.”
