Since its launch in 1990, the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) has provided an overview of working conditions in Europe.
European Working Conditions Survey 2024
Eurofound carried out the fieldwork for the latest edition of its European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) during 2024. The EWCS 2024 provides a comprehensive picture of the everyday reality of men and women at work. In order to future-proof this unique tool for European comparative analysis on working conditions and to look at how trend analysis could be maintained, in parallel to the face-to-face interviews for this survey edition, Eurofound also implemented an experiment for an online questionnaire for the first time.
The microdata for the EWCS 2024 will be available via the UK Data Service in December 2025. Please refer to the Data availability page for more information on raw data access.
The 2024 edition of the survey provides data to be able to continue to:
assess and quantify working conditions of both employees and self-employed workers across the EU Member States and beyond on a harmonised basis
analyse relationships between different aspects of working conditions
identify work situations that are of concern and/or groups at risk, as well as monitoring areas of improvement
monitor trends by providing homogeneous indicators on these issues
contribute to European policy development, particularly on quality of work and employment
Analysis of the EWCS 2024 is still ongoing. In the meantime, Eurofound's first findings and podcast provide initial insights into the new edition of this survey.
3 September 2025
30 June 2025
As the newest edition in Eurofound's longest-running survey, the EWCS 2024 aims to ensure continuity of the survey analysis, accurate and timely findings and high-quality outputs, as well as adaptability of data collection methods for the future.
Continuity of survey analysis: Comparative analysis, rich set of indicators, job quality at the heart, different working situations, quality of working lives
Quality of findings and outputs: Relevance to users, quality of the questionnaire and finalisation process, quality of the translation, quality of the survey production process
Adaptability of data collection: Comparability over time but also new questions dealing with 'the future of work that we want', findings solutions to collect high-quality comparative data on job quality in a changing data collection environment
The main emphasis of the preparatory work was on maintaining trends to ensure comparability over time in job quality and key indicators on quality of working life, incorporating gender mainstreaming. New questions have been developed to cover the key policy and research agenda around the future of work, including the impact of COVID-19, digitalisation and decarbonisation at work.
A study was commissioned on how to transition interviewer-administered, cross-national surveys to an online mode, with particular emphasis on the EWCS, and another on cognitive pretesting using cross-cultural interviews and web probing.
A comprehensive pilot test took place in all countries from September to November 2023 which provided valuable information to ensure the fieldwork implementation for the main survey is of the highest quality. Following the pilot test a small number of changes were made to the questionnaire and the online design was finalised, based on tests to assess the most appropriate methodological approach for the push-to-web survey.
The survey was carried out from February to November 2024.
Approximately 36,644 workers were interviewed in 35 countries, including the EU27, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.
Face-to-face interviews were conducted with respondents.
49 language versions of the questionnaire are available.
To display this data, use the filters below to select a question. Refine the results by selecting a country (or group of countries), apply additional filters (which vary throughout the surveys) or change the visualisation by selecting a preferred chart type.
EWCS 2024 (all questions)
This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.
Methodology
Contractor
Verian, Belgium
Coverage
27 EU Member States, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia and Switzerland
Fieldwork period
February–November 2024
Target population
All residents of the countries mentioned between above of 16-74 years of age and in employment at the time of the survey. People were considered to be in employment if they had worked for pay or profit for at least an hour in the week preceding the interview (ILO definition).
Sample
Multi-stage, stratified, random samples of the working population in each country. Depending on the availability of high-quality registers, sampling was carried out using individual-level, household-level and address-level registers, or through enumeration using a random-walk approach. Country-level samples were stratified by region and degree of urbanisation. In each stratum, primary sampling units (PSUs) were randomly selected proportional to size. Subsequently, a random sample of households was drawn in each PSU. Finally, unless individual-level registers were used, in each household the selected respondent was the person in work who would have their birthday next.
Sample size
The target sample was 1,000 interviews in all countries except Luxembourg (500), Cyprus, Malta and Kosovo (800). Slovenia (1,300) and Belgium (2,000) had a higher target since they topped up the base sample size at their own cost. The final number of valid interviews for the EWCS 2024 in all 35 countries is 36,644.
Type
Face to face, at the respondent’s home using computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI); median interview duration 42 minutes.
Quality assurance
Respondents were interviewed in the national language(s) of their country. Overall 49 language versions were used.
The English source questionnaire is available.
The language versions of the questionnaire are made available to researchers for background information. Note that there may be some very small discrepancies between the language version and the English source version due to last-minute scripting adjustments prior to fieldwork which are not reflected in the Excel version. If any anomalies are identified the source version should be considered the reference. Eurofound would be grateful to be informed of any issues arising in the translations.
Download the questionnaire in the language of each country below.
Eurofound experts
You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.
Agnès Parent-Thirion
Senior research managerAgnès Parent-Thirion is a senior research manager in the Working Life unit at Eurofound, tasked with the planning, development and implementation of working conditions research projects, in particular the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and its analyses. She is responsible for the EWCS 2021 extraordinary edition and for the preparation of the questionnaire for the EWCS 2024. Her research interests include working conditions, job quality, the monitoring of working conditions, work organisation, gender, the future of work and time. She has been working in the area of European comparative surveys for more than a decade, in all aspects including design, questionnaire development, fieldwork, quality control and analysis. She is a graduate in economics and management from Paris IX Dauphine and Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne universities and holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Statistics from Trinity College Dublin. She has recently completed online courses on artificial intelligence: inquiry-driven leadership with MIT Sloan Executive Education and ‘Les grand enjeux de la transition: re-ouvrir l'horizon, comprendre pour agir’ with the Campus de la Transition. Before joining Eurofound, she worked for a number of years in the European Commission.
Sophia MacGoris
Surveys officerSophia MacGoris is surveys officer based in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She works on all three of Eurofound's surveys. Having been involved in cross-national surveys for many years, she uses her experience and her transversal role to ensure a continuity of learning and quality assurance to the highest level during the entire survey process. Prior to joining Eurofound in 1996, she worked for several years in the European Commission in Brussels in the area of science, research and development. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Social Science specialising in Social Policy.
