This 2024 annual review of minimum wages provides a synopsis of minimum wage setting during 2023 in the EU27 and Norway. It reports in detail on the processes and outcomes of setting the minimum wage rates for 2024 and beyond. It investigates the extent to which minimum wage earners were affected by the cost-of-living crisis and shows how minimum wage workers are distributed across households over the entire income distribution.

On 11 March 2024, employment and social affairs ministers from the EU Member States endorsed the agreement reached with the European Parliament in February 2024 on the platform work directive. The directive introduces the presumption of employment – to be applied following national rules – as well as the first EU rules to regulate algorithmic management in the workplace.

The new rules address cases of misclassification of platform workers and ease the way for such workers to be reclassified as employees, guaranteeing easier access to their rights as employees under EU law. The agreement also includes provisions that will better protect platform workers’ personal data and increase transparency on how algorithm systems are used to take decisions in the workplace.

Ensuring greater social protection for self-employed people has been the subject of much policy debate in recent years. In 2019, the Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. Sudden reductions in income during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of many self-employed workers. Using data from the European Working Conditions Telephone Survey, this report examines the working conditions of different groups of self-employed people.