The Demands of Work

With relatively low unemployment, the quality of work is increasingly under the spotlight. Job satisfaction declined among workers in Britain during the 1990s. However, the picture of change for some important aspects of job quality is a little more optimistic in recent years. There has been a reduction in the proportion of workers working long hours from a peak of 36 per cent in 1995 to 30 per cent in 2002. This reduction signals a possible resumption of the historical trend to hours reduction. The notion that ‘Britons work the longest hours in Europe’ has always been a myth. Even though British men have till recently worked the longest hours, women in Britain have worked hours below the European average. Now, men working full-time still work long hours in Britain, but no longer are their weekly hours the longest in Europe. As of 2001, that accolade falls to Greek men, closely followed by Irish men. Government has had a significant impact on workers’ paid holidays: the proportions of women workers deprived of any entitlements to paid holidays fell from 15 per cent in 1996 to just 6 per cent in 2001, and this was almost certainly due to the European Directive on Working Time. Up to the late 1990s, the pace of work was being intensified in British workplaces, with the greatest intensification being in the public sector. High workloads are associated with stress and lower job satisfaction. But since 1997 there has been no significant change on average in the perceived intensity of work. Rising skill requirements signal that jobs continue to become more challenging and rewarding. By 2001, computers had become essential in four out of every ten jobs, up from less than one in three in 1997. Over the same period, the proportion of jobs requiring a degree or equivalent vocational or professional qualification rose from 24 per cent to 29 per cent, while the proportion requiring no qualifications at all fell from 32 per cent to 27 per cent.