Measuring Employment Arrangements in the European Labour Force: A Typological Approach

In this article employment quality in the EU27 is investigated by means of a typological approach, based on several features of the employment conditions and relations characterising jobs. The analyses are drawing on data from the 2005 European Working Conditions Survey. Results of Latent Class Cluster Analyses show that it is empirically and theoretically possible to reduce a multitude of factors determining the quality of employment into five different types of jobs regarding their employment quality: SER-like jobs, instrumental jobs, precarious unsustainable jobs, precarious intensive jobs and portfolio jobs. These five types of jobs are strongly related with important covariates such as the socio-demographic profile of workers, organisation level features and indicators of the intrinsic nature of work tasks. Moreover, they are clearly distributed differently between countries within the EU27. The findings from this innovative approach towards the quality of employment are discussed in terms of the implications for the measurement of contemporary employment arrangements in Europe.