Just one in five people on a flexible employment contract works variable hours and short periods by choice, the national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday.

This means 1.4 million people are working on flexible contracts when they would rather have a permanent job, the CBS said.

Around a quarter of the working population – 1.7 million people – has a flexible job. The CBS’s new labour market survey shows that most of them have been forced into temporary employment because they cannot find a traditional job.

New CBS figures also show that just 4% of people on flexible contracts find themselves unemployed after three months, compared with over 5% in the first quarter of 2014. Some 12% now go on to find a permanent job, compared with 11% two years ago.