192.8 million employed (with an average working week of 40.2 hours) and 19.1 million unemployed: these are the employment data for the European Union in 2003, according to the new Eurostat Report on the workforce. Various league tables have been compiled by the EU statistics agency. Record levels of employment were achieved (in order) by Denmark, Holland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, with percentages well above 70%. Low levels are registered by Italy (56.1%), Malta (54.2%) and Poland (51,2%), countries that also registered the highest levels of unemployment together with Greece and Slovakia. Sweden and Denmark present the best data in terms of female employment; in Italy, Greece and Spain, on the contrary, less than one woman out of two works, while in Malta the ratio is one in three. Other interesting data: part-time workers account for 32.8% of the workforce in Holland, 17.4% in the United Kingdom and only 1.3% in Slovakia. As regards fixed-term contract work, Spain leads the league table with 30.6%, followed by Portugal (20,6%) and Poland (19.4%): France and Germany reach 12.5%, and Italy barely 10%. In Estonia, only 25 workers out of every thousand are employed on fixed-term contracts.
