Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 33 
number of workers in industry decreased,  but the number of workers in the above- mentioned service 
sectors increased.  
 
3.1.2 Work intensity  
There are numerous references showing that during the period between 1990 and 2005 work intensity 
has considerably increased.28  
For example, Eurofound has analysed the responses to the two EWCS questions on high speed at work 
and tight deadlines. The EWCS found a significant increase of work intensity between 1991 and 2005. 
In 1991, ‘Working at a very high speed’ was for the majority of respondents not an issue. Fifty-two per 
cent of the workers responded to this statement ‘Never’ or ‘Almost never’; in 1991 , 24% worked at high 
speed and responded ‘Around ¾ of the time’, ‘Almost all of the time’ and ‘All of the time’; until 2005 this 
response rate went up by 11% to 35%. 
Working to tight deadlines  was not an issue for 34% in 1990, and in 2005 only for 19%, a reduction 
of 15%. The percentage of the sum of responses ‘Around ¾ of the time’, ‘Almost all of the time’ or ‘All 
of the time’ to this question on tight deadlines i ncreased between 1991 and 2005 from 29% to 37%. 
Regarding these two indicators, work intensity has evidently increased between 1991 and 2005.29 
 
Figure 10: Development of work intensity indicators between 1991 and 2015 – Eurofound  
 
After that first period between 1991 and 2005,  this development seems to stagnate between 2005 
and 2015.30 The responses ‘Almost all of the time’ or ‘All of the time’ vary only slightly, between 33% 
and 37% depending on year and question (‘Working at high speed’ or ‘Working to tight deadlines’).  
Differences can be seen regarding sector, company size and occupation. Regarding work intensity , 
ESENER enterprise data on time pressure for the EU27 indicate a slight increase of 2.3% between 2014 
and 2019 from 43% to 45%.31 Interestingly, according to ESENER, time pressure drastically increases 
with the size of the enterprise. In enterprises with 5 - 9 employees, 39% report time pressure, and in 
enterprises with above 250 employees 69%. 32  The same applies for long working hours, where 
enterprises with 5 - 9 employees report 19% ‘long working hours’, and in enterprises with above 250 
employees this percentage increases to about 39% (EU27, 2019).33