Part-Time Work in Liechtenstein: Hours, Pay and Pension

The line sits at 90 percent — and it is not a convention but the official classification used in the employment statistics. The Office of Statistics uses three classes:

• Full-time — 90 percent and above
• Part-time — 50 to 89 percent
• Part-time — below 50 percent

What matters is the difference between this statistical classification and your employment contract. Legally, Liechtenstein has no separate part-time employment law — the same rules apply as for full-time work, simply scaled to your agreed level. The contract must state working time as a percentage, and everything else follows from that.

An 80 percent role is therefore no special case in law, yet already part-time in the statistics. So whenever a job ad says «part-time», look for the actual percentage — the range runs from 10 to 89 percent.

More common than the headcount alone suggests. At the end of 2024, 43'441 people were employed in Liechtenstein — but together they accounted for only 36'433 full-time equivalents. That gap of roughly 7'000 positions is part-time work.

Women made up 40.5 percent of all employees in 2024, a share that has been stable for years. The movement underneath is the notable part: the share of women in part-time roles is falling — both in the 50 to 89 percent band and below 50 percent. Put the other way round, men are increasingly working part-time. In Liechtenstein this is long past being a women's topic.

The distribution follows the workplaces: a good half of all employees work in Vaduz (26.2 percent) or Schaan (24.8 percent), followed by Eschen at 11.9 percent. If you are looking for part-time work and commuting, that is where the choice is widest.

The most common misunderstanding concerns holidays. The statutory minimum of four weeks is not reduced for part-time work — it stays at four weeks. All that changes is how it converts into days:

• 5 days a week — four weeks of holiday is 20 days
• 3 days a week — four weeks of holiday is 12 days
• The same time off — in both cases you are away for four weeks a year

This matters most when someone changes their workload: if you go from five days to three, have the holidays already taken and still outstanding converted first. The full rules on holidays, probation and notice periods are in the article on employment law in Liechtenstein.

Pay works the opposite way: it follows your workload directly. The 13 statutory public holidays, meanwhile, hit part-timers unevenly — if you never work Mondays you lose nothing when a holiday falls on one, but you gain nothing either. Which days those are is covered in the article on public holidays in Liechtenstein.

This is the point that costs part-timers most over a lifetime — and it almost never comes up when the contract is signed. Occupational pension provision, the second pillar, only starts above a fixed threshold:

Anyone below it is covered by AHV but builds no second pillar. It goes unnoticed in the monthly payslip and only becomes visible at retirement. On a full-time salary of CHF 60'000, the threshold is reached at roughly a 25 percent workload — with lower salaries, correspondingly later.

One detail sets Liechtenstein apart from Switzerland and is regularly confused: there is no coordination deduction here. Swiss figures for the entry threshold and the coordinated salary therefore cannot be transferred. What else comes off your gross pay is covered in the article on social security contributions.

Here things turn out surprisingly favourable for many. If you work for several employers, you count as part-employed with each one of them and are subject to insurance there (Art. 6(7) BPVG). In such cases the law assumes several equivalent occupations.

The exception is a genuine secondary occupation: where one of the jobs is recognisably a sideline, the insurance requirement falls away for it, and only the main occupation is insured.

In practice: two 40 percent jobs with two employers can both be subject to pension contributions, while a single 40 percent job may stay below the threshold depending on salary. If you split your workload across several jobs, raise the pension question explicitly with both employers — the salaries are not added together automatically.

Health insurance, by contrast, does not change: it depends on residence, not on workload. Anyone living in Liechtenstein is compulsorily insured and pays the same premium as a full-time employee — details in the article on moving to Liechtenstein for work.

Every listing on joblie states its workload as a percentage or a range — so you never have to guess whether «part-time» means 40 or 80 percent. You will find them together under all part-time jobs in Liechtenstein.

If your preferred workload is not listed, it is still worth asking: many roles are divisible in principle but advertised as full-time by default. The rise in men working part-time started exactly here — the workloads people want emerge in conversation, not in the advert.

For a move into a new field, a reduced workload is often the more realistic way in; there is more on that in the article about changing careers in Liechtenstein. All other open positions are listed under all jobs in Liechtenstein. This article is not legal or pension advice.