Measuring Precarious Employment: A Proposal for Two Indicators of Precarious Employment Based on Set-Theory and Tested with Dutch Labor Market-Data

Scholars claim that precarious employment is rising. The precariously employed earn low wages, have little job- and income security and occupy jobs that can generally be deemed low quality. These employees are at a disproportionally high risk of poverty and are at risk of detrimental psychological effects. Despite the salience of the issue, precarious employment remains an elusive concept and has proven difficult to measure directly. Instead, measurement tends to rely on non-integrated indicators and proxies, thus introducing significant issues concerning the validity of found results. This paper proposes two integrated indicators for specific aspects of precarious employment. Indicator 1 focuses on income insecurity and is constructed using wage, supplementary income and unemployment benefit entitlements. Indicator 2 focuses on job insecurity and is constructed using contract type and unemployment duration. Additionally, to check for the coexistence of job- and income insecurity at the individual level and give a more holistic picture of precarious employment, Indicators 1 and 2 are integrated. First, previous research on precarious employment and job insecurity is reviewed to bolster the indicators’ validity. Second, the indicators are constructed using an approach grounded in crisp-set theory and data from the Dutch “Organisatie Strategisch Arbeidsmartkonderzoek” labor supply panel. Finally, the indicators are tested by assessing precarious employment over time, by educational level, sector and immigrant status.     

What Does Non-standard Employment Look Like in the United States? An Empirical Typology of Employment Quality

Despite significant interest in the changing nature of employment as a critical social and economic challenge facing society—especially the decline in the so-called Standard Employment Relationship (SER) and rise in more insecure, precarious forms of employment—scholars have struggled to operationalize the multifaceted and heterogeneous nature of contemporary worker-employer relationships within empirical analyses. Here we investigate the character and distribution of employment relationships in the U.S., drawing on a representative sample of wage-earners and self-employed from the General Social Survey (2002–2018). We use the multidimensional construct of employment quality, which includes both contractual (e.g., wages, contract type) and relational (e.g., employee representation and participation) aspects of employment. We further employ a typological measurement approach, using latent class analysis, to explicitly examine how the multiple aspects of employment cluster together in modern labor markets. We present eight distinct employment types in the U.S., including one resembling the historical conception of the SER model (24% of the total workforce), and others representing various constellations of favorable and adverse employment features. These employment types are unevenly distributed across society, in terms of who works these jobs and where they are found in the labor market. Importantly, women, those with lower education, and younger workers are more likely to be in precarious forms of employment. More generally, our typology reveals limitations associated with binary conceptions of standard vs. non-standard employment, or insider–outsider dichotomies envisioned within dual labor market theories.

     

A New Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Precarious Employment

This article proposes a new methodology to measure precarious employment with a multidimensional approach. The adjusted multidimensional precariousness rate employed to measure job precariousness is calculated on a counting approach and exhibit several advantages, including its decomposability according to the relative contribution to total precariousness of different dimensions and sub-populations. For illustrative purposes, the methodology is applied to the Spanish case using microdata from the Encuesta de Estructura Salarial (Wage Structure Survey) and considering three precariousness dimensions of jobs (low wages, fixed-term contracts and part-time work). The evidence obtained shows that at the beginning of the economic crisis there was an increase in the incidence and intensity of precariousness for new jobs created in the Spanish economy. Moreover, obtained evidence shows that the incidence of precarious employment is particularly high in certain economic sectors and for females.     

Women’s Job Quality Across Family Life Stages: An Analysis of Female Employees Across 27 European Countries

There is little empirical evidence on how working conditions affect women’s employment and fertility choices, despite a number of studies on the impact of individual-level and institutional factors. The article addresses this gap by examining how family life stages are related to particular aspects of job quality among employed women in 27 European countries. The central argument of the analysis is that high-quality jobs are conducive to both transitions to motherhood and employment after childbirth as women select into these roles. Accordingly, mothers of young children, if employed, are expected to have relatively better quality jobs. Four dimensions of job quality are considered: job security, career progression, working time and intrinsic job quality. The results indicate that mothers with young children are more likely to hold high-quality jobs than women at other life stages with respect to working time quality and job security, but with some variation across countries for job security. The findings highlight the importance of high-quality jobs for women’s fertility decisions and labour market attachment after childbirth, with implications for European employment policy.     

Can We Still Learn Something From the Relationship Between Fertility and Mother’s Employment? Evidence From Developing Countries

In this work, I study the impact of fertility on mothers’ employment for a sample of developing countries. Using the event of multiple births as an instrumental variable (IV) for fertility, I find that having children has a negative impact on female employment. In addition, three types of heterogeneity are found. First, the magnitude of the impact depends on the birth at which the increase in fertility takes place. Second, the types of jobs affected by a fertility shock (multiple births) are jobs identified with a higher degree of informality, such as self-employment or unpaid jobs. Finally, the heterogeneity analysis reveals that an unexpected change in fertility is stronger at a higher education level of the mother and in urban areas.     

„Guten Tag, hier spricht Ihr Bürgerservice, was kann ich für Sie tun?“

The aim of this article is to examine a specific aspect of restructuring in the public sector: the implementation of call centres in customer service and its effects on job quality. The trend to organise customer service through call centres gained worldwide importance back in the 1990s. In the public sector it emerges only recently in connection to strategies of ‘new public management’. The article presents five international case study organisations from the public sector from Austria, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The article concludes that the implementation of call centres or the outsourcing of customer service to private service providers has severe consequences for the quality of employment in the public sector and in the new — female dominated — service sector jobs. This concerns in particular the following three aspects: fragmentation of employment, qualification versus standardisation and interest representation.     

Temporary Work in Transnational Labor Regulation: SER-Centrism and the Risk of Exacerbating Gendered Precariousness

This article explores the transnational regulation of temporary work. Analyzing the terms of the EU Directive on Fixed-Term Work (1999), the ILO Convention on Private Employment Agencies (1997), the ILO Recommendation on the Employment Relationship (2006), and a draft EU Directive on Temporary Agency Work under negotiation, it demonstrates that these regulations hinge on the gendered norm of the standard employment relationship (SER) or the full-time permanent job complete with a social wage. They pursue labor protections designed to stretch the employment norm. To the extent that this “SER-centric” approach alleviates precariousness, it is most likely to help workers in forms of employment closely resembling the SER (i.e., fixed-term workers) and least likely to improve the situations of those that are most precarious (i.e., temporary agency workers).

Precarious employment among South Korean women: Insights from a comparison to France

Family responsibilities for women are often associated with precarious employment. This relation varies depending on whether women can reconcile family life and work or not. Based on the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study from 1998 to 2008 and on the French part of the European Community Household Panel between 1998 and 2001, a multiple correspondence analysis shows that precariousness in employment is correlated with family life and levels of education. The better conditions of work-family balance in France enable young mothers to combine family life with stable employment of good quality, which is not the case for South Korean women. The comparison of the two countries highlights the necessary reforms in favor of women’s better being.     

Male-female differences in labor market outcomes during the early transition to market: The cases of Estonia and Slovenia

Changes in women's relative wages and employment are analyzed, using social security data from Slovenia (1987–1992) and a retrospective labor force survey in Estonia (1989–1994). Estonia adopted liberal labor market policies. Slovenia took an interventionist approach. Nevertheless, relative wages for women rose in both countries. Factors favoring women included: returns to human capital rose in transition, benefiting women; relative labor demand shifted toward predominantly female sectors; low-wage women had a disproportionate incentive to exit the labor market, especially in Estonia. However, women were less mobile across jobs in both countries, so men disproportionately filled new jobs in expanding sectors. Received: 27 November 1997/Accepted: 20 December 1998     

Gebildet, flexibel und prek?r. Berufseinstieg von Graduierten der Universit?t Salzburg

This article??s aim is to enlighten university graduates?? transition to the labor market, with a focus on atypical forms of work, which have increased strongly in Austria in the past ten years. Especially career entrants, even if highly educated, are affected by these, potentially precarious types of employment. The theoretical part deals with the labor market in general and the specific conditions for academic career-entrants. Using data of the graduate survey conducted by the University of Salzburg in November 2009, this article shows that de facto two thirds of the questioned academic career entrants are employed atypically at the time of the survey. Nevertheless these flexible forms of work seem to decrease the more time has passed since graduation. Therefore a process of normalization of employment forms is assumed.     

Good Job,Good Life? Working Conditions and Quality of Life in Europe

Cross-national comparisons generally show large differences in life satisfaction of individuals within and between European countries. This paper addresses the question of whether and how job quality and working conditions contribute to the quality of life of employed populations in nine strategically selected EU countries: Finland, Sweden, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Using data from the European Quality of Life Survey 2003, we examine relationships between working conditions and satisfaction with life, as well as whether spillover or segmentation mechanisms better explain the link between work domain and overall life satisfaction. Results show that the level of life satisfaction varies significantly across countries, with higher quality of life in more affluent societies. However, the impact of working conditions on life satisfaction is stronger in Southern and Eastern European countries. Our study suggests that the issue of security, such as security of employment and pay which provides economic security, is the key element that in a straightforward manner affects people’s quality of life. Other working conditions, such as autonomy at work, good career prospects and an interesting job seem to translate into high job satisfaction, which in turn increases life satisfaction indirectly. In general, bad-quality jobs tend to be more ‘effective’ in worsening workers’ perception of their life conditions than good jobs are in improving their quality of life. We discuss the differences in job-related determinants of life satisfaction between the countries and consider theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Psychological Well-Being,Job Strain and Education Among Young Finnish Precarious Employees

This study examined the effect of precarious work (temporary and part-time present employment and unstable work history) on psychological well-being among young employees at age 31, controlling for prior mental disorders, education and job strain. The data of 1,070 women and 1,030 men was derived from the prospective unselected population-based Northern Finland 1966 Birth Cohort study. Results of univariate logistic regression models showed that among men, precarious work associated with all psychological well-being outcomes. Among women, only depressive symptoms at 31 years associated with precarious work. Among both genders, the association between precarious work and well-being outcomes diminished to a statistically non-significant level in multivariate analyses including prior mental diagnosis, education level and job strain. In the final multivariate logistic regression models, job strain and education level were the strongest factors associating with the well-being outcomes. The association between depression symptoms and precarious work was strongest in the highest educational class among men. These results emphasize the role of education and job strain in the enhancement of psychological well-being among young employees doing precarious work. The role of education seems to differ among genders, so that for women education acts as a resource also in precarious work while among highly educated men, not having a stable employment history increases the risk for depressive symptoms.     

Employment Patterns of Less-Skilled Workers: Links to Children’s Behavior and Academic Progress

Using data from five waves of the Women’s Employment Survey (WES; 1997–2003), we examine the links between low-income mothers’ employment patterns and the emotional behavior and academic progress of their children. We find robust and substantively important linkages between several different dimensions of mothers’ employment experiences and child outcomes. The pattern of results is similar across empirical approaches—including ordinary least squares and child fixed-effect models, with and without an extensive set of controls. Children exhibit fewer behavior problems when mothers work and experience job stability (relative to children whose mothers do not work). In contrast, maternal work accompanied by job instability is associated with significantly higher child behavior problems (relative to employment in a stable job). Children whose mothers work full-time and/or have fluctuating work schedules also exhibit significantly higher levels of behavior problems. However, full-time work has negative consequences for children only when it is in jobs that do not require cognitive skills. Such negative consequences are completely offset when this work experience is in jobs that require the cognitive skills that lead to higher wage growth prospects. Finally, fluctuating work schedules and full-time work in non-cognitively demanding jobs are each strongly associated with the probability that the child will repeat a grade or be placed in special education.     

大学生就业难的症结分析

大学毕业生就业问题目前已经成为了全社会普遍关注的热点。大学生就业难是未来10年内的十大社会问题之一。大学生就业难的成因很多,其症结主要是在大学生及高校身上,表现为结构性失业,即"有业就不上,有业不想就,有业不能就,无业可以就"。提高高等教育办学的质量,增强大学生的核心竞争力,转变大学生的就业观念和价值取向,促进大学生的全面发展,是解决大学生就业难的根本出路。     

Up and on or down and out? Gender, immigration and the consequences of temporary employment in Canada

What happens to temporary workers when their jobs end? Is temporary employment a fleeting way station to a better job, or does it herald an ongoing cycle of precariousness? What are the implications of temporary employment dynamics for broader patterns of inequality in labour markets? European researchers have focused increasing attention on these issues in the context of concern about the relationship between inequality and insecurity in labour markets with strong regulatory protections for insiders. However, research on the outcomes of temporary employment in the less regulated labour markets of North America remains limited. This paper draws on rich representative panel data from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) and competing risks Cox regression to assess the outcomes and dynamics of temporary employment in this understudied context. Key contributions include more precise estimates of transitions, consideration of multiple theoretically relevant outcomes (permanent jobs; new temporary jobs; and periods of unemployment and labour force withdrawal), and situation of the effect of gender and immigration status on temporary employment transitions in the context of the dynamics of permanent jobs. Findings present a more pessimistic picture of overall temporary job outcomes than prior research but suggest that the dynamics of temporary work do not magnify inequalities of gender and immigration status.     

Composite Indicator of Social Inclusion for European Countries

Social inclusion is one of the key challenges of the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy. We use four indicators from EU policies to measure social inclusion for the 27 member countries of Europe. In particular, we aggregate the four indicators in a multiplicative composite indicator via a DEA-BoD approach with weights determined endogenously with proportion constraints. We obtain a score of social inclusion that allows us to grade the 27 EU countries from 2006 to 2010. In this way, we highlight the specific role played by the four indicators in determining improvements and deteriorations of social inclusion during the European phase of the financial and economic crisis.     

中国高校规模扩张与大学生城镇就业问题研究

文章从大学生就业供给总量与结构的关系入手,分析了城市化、工业化发展水平对大学生城镇就业规模的影响,高校毕业生就业供给总量增长对专业供给结构的影响,对比分析了城镇就业结构与大学生就业专业供给结构不同的变动方向,得出的结论是,大学生就业供给总量与结构性失衡,是相互联系、相互制约的有机整体,大学生就业矛盾的缓解,有待于经济结构的持续改善和高校内部改革的深化。     

Challenges in Constructing a Multi-dimensional European Job Quality Index

There are few attempts to benchmark job quality in a multi-dimensional perspective across Europe. Against this background, we have created a synthetic job quality index (JQI) for the EU27 countries in an attempt to shed light on the question of how European countries compare with each other and how they are developing over time in terms of job quality. Taking account of the multi-faceted nature of job quality, the JQI is compiled on the basis of six sub-indices which cover the most important dimensions of job quality as identified in the literature. The paper addresses the methods used to construct the JQI and make it comparable over time. It presents the results for 2010 and briefly addresses changes over time to illustrate the potential and limits of a multidimensional European JQI. It also considers alternative specifications for various sub-indices and tests for the impact of changes in the indicators used on the outcomes. Overall, the findings appear to confirm the feasibility and desirability of attempting to assess job quality by means of a composite index that can be periodically updated. The key strength of this approach is the possibility to monitor and benchmark EU countries’ overall job quality performances and the outcomes in six sub-dimensions of job quality and compare them with each other, across gender and over time. At the same time, the limitations of such a composite index need to be borne in mind. The most important challenges are the availability (over time), timeliness and periodicity, comparability and disaggregation of data.     

个体性别意识与女大学生就业质量--基于五所高校的数据分析

本文以福建省五所高校大学生就业问题的调查数据为基础,分析了个体性别意识与女大学生就业质量的关系。研究发现,性别分工观念、性别自信及性别权利意识等因素对女大学生就业质量均有重要正向影响,但影响程度不同,性别平等意识对男女大学生就业质量的影响呈反向差别。     

Age,Wage, and Job Placement: Older Women’s Experiences Entering the Retail Sector

Older women seeking employment often find opportunities limited to low-wage jobs, such as those in retail. We report findings about job placement and starting wages for hourly workers hired at a women’s apparel retailer from August 2006 to December 2009. We examine competing hypotheses regarding the role of age in explaining women’s job placement and starting wages. Although newly hired women age 55+ earn higher wages and are placed in higher-quality jobs than the youngest women (ages 18–22), they are less likely to be placed in better-quality jobs than their midlife counterparts. Overall, wage differences are largely explained by job quality.