Luxembourg’s traditional full-time, permanent, daytime job from Monday to Friday has become a minority model for resident workers, according to Statec, the national statistics bureau. In 2025, only 34% of employed residents worked under what Statec described as a “typical” arrangement, while the remaining 66% had at least one atypical working pattern.

The shift is unfolding in one of Europe’s most cross-border labour markets. At the end of 2025, Luxembourg had nearly 494,000 salaried workers, up 4.6% compared with 2019. Statec reported that 262,000 were residents and 232,000 were cross-border workers, meaning frontier employees accounted for 47% of all salaried workers in the country.

The workforce also remained majority male and highly international. Men represented 58% of salaried employees and women 42%, while only one in four salaried workers in Luxembourg held Luxembourgish nationality. Among resident employees, half were Luxembourg nationals. The cross-border workforce was primarily drawn from neighbouring countries, with 129,000 commuting from France, 52,000 from Belgium and 51,000 from Germany.

Atypical work

Statec defined “typical” employment as full-time work under a permanent contract, carried out between 8am and 5pm from Monday to Friday. On that basis, only 34% of resident workers fell into the traditional model in 2025. The remaining 66% worked under one or more atypical arrangements, including part-time work, fixed-term contracts, shift work, evening work, night work or weekend work.

Part-time work remained one of the most visible departures from the standard model. Statec found that 18.4% of resident workers were employed part-time in 2025, broadly unchanged from 18.5% in 2021. The practice remained much more common among women, with 29.1% working part-time compared with 9.0% of men. Statec noted, however, that the gender gap had narrowed slightly since 2021, when 31.1% of women and 7.5% of men worked part-time.

Fixed-term contracts were less widespread but remained significant. Statec reported that 9.1% of resident employees held a fixed-term contract in 2025, a level close to 2021, after a softer period in 2022 and 2023 when the rate was around 7.4%.

Shift work also formed part of the changing employment landscape. Statec described shift work as an arrangement in which several teams successively rotate on the same post. In 2025, fewer than one in five residents usually worked in shifts in their main job, with broadly similar proportions among men and women. The report found that shift work was most common in transport and storage, at 54%, followed by accommodation and food services at 49% and administrative and support activities at 41%.

Evening, night and weekend work

Non-standard hours were common among Luxembourg residents, with 36% working at least occasionally in the evening, after 6pm, and 15% at night, between midnight and 5am. The gender gap was limited for evening work, at 37% for men and 34% for women, but wider for night work, at 18% and 12%, respectively.

Transport and storage was among the most exposed sectors, with 40% of workers reporting at least occasional night work and more than half working in the evening. Accommodation and food services ranked highest for evening work, at 60%, while 27% of its workers worked at night.

Weekend work was also widespread, with 29% of residents working on Saturdays and 21% on Sundays, slightly more often among men. Statec found accommodation and food services were most affected, followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing, while arts, entertainment and recreation, real estate and wholesale and retail trade also recorded higher weekend work.

Information and communication, finance and insurance made relatively little use of weekend work, while construction rarely operated on Sundays, partly because of legal constraints. Atypical schedules were most common in accommodation and food services, at 78%, followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing at 70%, transport and storage at 63%, commerce, real estate and household services at 56%, education, arts and leisure at 55%, industry, administrative services and health-social work at 54%, information, finance and specialised services at 40% and construction, public administration and infrastructure at 35%.

Work-life balance

Statec’s report pointed to a clear gender divide in how work and family life interact. Among residents aged 18 to 54 who had raised children and were currently employed or had previously worked, 63% had taken some form of family leave, including maternity, paternity or parental leave.

Women were far more likely to do so, at 77%, compared with 48% of men, and were also more likely to combine birth-related leave with parental leave. Leave duration also differed sharply: among those who had taken family leave, 29% were absent for less than six months, 38% for between six months and one year and 33% for up to three years. Statec found that almost 90% of men were absent for no more than one year, including 28% for no more than one month, while nearly half of women took between six months and one year and 42% took between two and six months.

The imbalance also showed up in career adjustments linked to childcare or caring for relatives. Among resident workers with such responsibilities, 61% of women had adapted their professional situation, compared with 45% of men, largely because women were more likely to reduce hours or move to part-time work. Statec’s chart showed that 21% of women reduced hours or shifted to part-time work, 40% made another interruption or adjustment and 39% made no change. For men, the respective shares were 7%, 38% and 55%.

Telework

Teleworking remained a structural feature of Luxembourg’s labour market, with 36% of employed people working from home at least occasionally in 2025. After rising during the Covid years and easing in 2023, the share stabilised in 2024 and 2025.

Statec’s long-term data showed teleworking rose from 20% in 2017 to 36% in 2025. Among teleworkers in 2025, 14% worked fewer than eight hours a week from home, 78% worked between eight and 31 hours and 8% worked 32 hours or more.

The practice varied sharply by sector, reaching 80% in extraterritorial activities, 69% in financial and insurance activities, 64% in information and communication and 56% in scientific, professional and technical activities. It stood at 34% in public administration, 23% in education, 19% across other sectors including industry, construction, commerce and transport and 9% in health and social work.

Compared with 2024, Statec noted slight increases in education, public administration and financial and insurance activities, but declines in information and communication and extraterritorial activities. The report concluded that teleworking remained concentrated among qualified white-collar workers, at 49%, compared with 11% of lower-qualified white-collar workers, 3% of qualified blue-collar workers and less than 1% of lower-qualified blue-collar workers.

Taken together, Statec’s findings suggest that Luxembourg’s old 9-to-5 employment model is no longer the default for most resident workers. Instead, the country’s labour market is increasingly defined by flexibility, sector-specific constraints and a continuing reliance on workers who cross the border each day from France, Belgium and Germany.