Informal carers provide a vital service to society. Yet their work remains unevenly shared and often invisible. EIGE’s latest survey shows how this limits careers, widens gender employment gaps and ultimately drains overall productivity.
Across Europe, millions balance paid work with caring for children, for older relatives, or persons with disabilities. This workload falls heavily on women.
What can look like a private family compromise quickly becomes a public economic loss.
Treating care as a personal issue is no longer sustainable. It is workforce infrastructure, as essential to economic performance as transport, energy or digital networks.
And when that infrastructure is weak, competitiveness suffers. So, if Europe wants to stay competitive, it must start taking care seriously.
“Care is the unseen foundation of our economies and societies. Yet it is still treated as a private responsibility rather than a shared one,” says EIGE Director, Carlien Scheele.
“If we want sustainable growth, we must design policies and workplaces that support women and men to share care more fairly.”
Europe’s biggest ever survey on unpaid care
To understand the scale of the challenge, EIGE recorded the experiences of more than 65,000 people across all 27 Member States.
The latest CARE survey is the most comprehensive EU-wide study of unpaid care ever conducted. It looks not only at who provides care, but how much time it takes, what tasks are involved and how those responsibilities shape daily life, work and wellbeing. The survey also covers access to formal care services, highlighting significant unmet needs and underlining why formal care remains central to policy discussions.
We found that participation alone does not equal equality. While women and men both care for children, when care becomes intensive, the balance shifts sharply.
Women are more than twice as likely as men to provide over 35 hours of childcare a week. That’s the equivalent of a second full-time job.
Women also take on the bulk of household chores – cooking, cleaning, laundry. While many men believe household tasks are shared evenly, EU-wide data tell a different story: 59% of women do housework chores every day, compared with 33% of men.
At work, women are more likely to reduce their hours or adapt their careers to fit care, limiting pay, progression and long-term financial security.
And time for rest is squeezed, too. We found that 45% of men enjoy eight or more hours of weekly leisure, compared with just 32% of women.
The economic toll of unevenly shared care
When care is unevenly shared, the costs build up across the economy. Working hours are cut, careers stall and skills go underused.
Meanwhile employers lose experienced staff, teams absorb heavier workloads and recruitment gaps widen.
Across Europe, many sectors are already grappling with labour shortages and an ageing population. Yet a significant share of the workforce (mostly women) is scaling back paid work to meet care needs.
Talent is being squeezed out by responsibilities that workplaces and care systems have failed to accommodate.
The result is lower productivity, higher burnout and reduced lifetime earnings, with consequences for businesses, public finances and long-term growth.
“Europe’s ageing population means the demand for long-term care will only grow,” says Katarina Ivanković-Knežević, Director for Social Rights and Inclusion at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion.
“Strengthening access to affordable and high-quality care services is essential for dignity and inclusion. Care services are a smart social investment, an essential component of our social protection systems, and also a key driver for gender equality, by supporting labour market participation.”
Hard-pressed families are filling the care gaps
For COFACE Families Europe, which represents family organisations across the continent, the findings reflect what members report every day.
“Most long-term care in Europe is delivered by family carers. Around 80% of the long-term care is provided by the family. It’s a huge and unsustainable number,” says Sebastian Gonzalez, who leads the network’s work on care and disability.
“As family, they're the ones on the frontline. They're the ones that care most. While they want to be part of it, the level of involvement is a choice they often don't have. One of our main goals is that care truly becomes a choice.”
He adds: “Intensive care is most often taken on by women. It can have negative impacts on health, on mental health and on social life. There is a lot of isolation and a lot of stress. One of the main challenges families face is reconciling work and care responsibilities.”
“There is also a quantifiable economic argument in recent studies. For every euro injected into formal care services, you could gain up to four euros for the economy. The proportion of women left out of the labour market has an important impact on productivity.”
The European Parliamentary Research Service reaches the same conclusion about the financial benefits of investing in care services, while estimating the economic costs of the gender care gap in providing informal care could reach around €147-€220 billion a year.
For COFACE, the most meaningful solutions to the challenge of unpaid care are to provide well-funded support services as well as strong, gender sensitive, work-life balance legislation.
“The situation is extremely precarious throughout the EU. For many people, formal services are inaccessible, unaffordable or of low quality, especially for persons with disabilities” says Sebastian Gonzalez.
“Giving family carers access to formal services is the main variable that could really improve their overall situations.”
The choice Europe faces today
We’ve seen that achieving gender equality can help to drive competitiveness. The CARE survey shows how inequalities in care are limiting careers, shrinking incomes and holding back growth of the economy as a whole.
Investing in availability, affordability and quality of childcare and long-term care services will not only help to tackle the EU’s skills shortage, it will also sharpen Europe’s competitive edge.
“We now have the data. And we know where the gaps are,” says Carlien Scheele.
“And the survey paints a clear picture of how carers try to bridge those gaps — by turning to formal care services that remain insufficient, leaning on family and friends, or ultimately facing unmet needs when support falls short.”
She emphasises: “The next step is action. By using these findings to inform updated policies and workplace practices we can make sure care is shared more fairly – and no longer managed at the expense of carers’ jobs and wellbeing. Treating care as a core policy priority is not only a social imperative, but a prerequisite for Europe’s competitiveness.”
If governments want higher employment, stronger productivity and resilient public finances, investment in care is key.
For Europe’s leaders, the decision is no longer whether the problem exists. It is whether they are prepared to treat care as the foundation of a competitive, fair and sustainable economy.
