Employment Quality: Are There Differences by Types of Contract?

The aim of this article is to build and measure an employment quality index that meets four conditions: it is simple and understandable; it enables measurement over a long time period; it can be updated on an annual basis; it is comparable between groups of workers. Our index is quantified for different workers depending on the type of contract they have. In particular, we distinguish between those who hold an open-ended contract, those with temporary contracts hired directly by companies and those working through a temporary help agency. Furthermore, the index is measured on a ‘gross’ and a ‘net’ basis, i.e. taking into account the potential “composition effect”. Data from the Spanish and Italian Labour Force Survey are used to carry out the measurement. Our findings show that job quality remained fairly stable during the period of analysis (2006–2014), with a slight increase at the beginning and a minor decrease later on, and workers holding an open-ended contract fared the best and those with temporary contracts hired directly by companies fared the worst.