From an interesting article on European labor markets:

The proportion of part-time workers in the United States has held steady at about 13 percent for more than a decade, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris. The number of Europe's temporary workers - people who may work a full week but move from company to company - is soaring. In the decade from 1990 to 2000, Manpower tripled its business, Lemonnier said.

In France, Germany and Italy, more than 12 percent of people working have temporary contracts. In Spain, the figure is more than 30 percent, and in the Netherlands it is 15 percent. Indeed, the percentage of Spanish workers in temporary and part-time jobs is so high that the government in Madrid proposed this week a bill to cut the number of employees on temporary contracts.

But weren't France and Germany, unlike America's Cowboy Capitalism, supposed to be models of employment stability etc.?