an economic downturn or recession may result primarily in layoffs of employees with shortterm contracts who are often younger and less experienced workers when an economy begins a period of expansion businesses may wish to avert risk and keep costs down at least initially by cautiously hiring workers on shortterm contracts in the aggregate the decisions of companies regarding their employees during the business cycle depend on the economic structure productservice demand and prices in the output market as well as labour supply main variables in the eulfs with connection to the indicator stapro selfemployed without employees employee temp employee has temporary jobwork contract of limited duration the lfs eulfs does not include the required information about shortterm work or instability of work