IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ecolab/v28y2017i3p402-419.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?

Author

Listed:
  • Wayne Lewchuk

Abstract

By the end of the 20th century, there was general agreement that most labour markets were in transition and that employment was becoming less secure. However, official labour market data have not shown a dramatic increase in temporary or casual employment. This article takes a new look at the changing characteristics of employment and offers a new method to measure employment security: the Employment Precarity Index. We use the Employment Precarity Index to assess how insecure employment associated with a ‘gig’ economy might affect well-being and social relations, including health outcomes, household well-being and community involvement.

Suggested Citation

  • Wayne Lewchuk, 2017. "Precarious jobs: Where are they, and how do they affect well-being?," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 28(3), pages 402-419, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:28:y:2017:i:3:p:402-419
    DOI: 10.1177/1035304617722943
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1035304617722943
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1035304617722943?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dan Woodman, 2013. "Young people’s friendships in the context of non-standard work patterns," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 24(3), pages 416-432, September.
    2. Duncan Gallie & Alan Felstead & Francis Green & Hande Inanc, 2017. "The hidden face of job insecurity," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 31(1), pages 36-53, February.
    3. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015," NBER Working Papers 22667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Bernhardt, Annette, 2014. "Labor Standards and the Reorganization of Work: Gaps in Data and Research," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt3hc6t3d5, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    5. Scott Burrows, 2013. "Precarious work, neo-liberalism and young people’s experiences of employment in the Illawarra region," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 24(3), pages 380-396, September.
    6. Philip Cross & Munir A. Sheikh, 2015. "The Recession's Impact on Canada's Labour Market," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 8(28), July.
    7. Geraldina Polanco, 2016. "Consent behind the counter: aspiring citizens and labour control under precarious (im)migration schemes," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(8), pages 1332-1350, August.
    8. Pasi Pyöriä & Satu Ojala, 2016. "Precarious work and intrinsic job quality: Evidence from Finland, 1984–2013," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 27(3), pages 349-367, September.
    9. Iain Campbell & John Burgess, 2001. "Casual Employment in Australia and Temporary Employment in Europe: Developing a Cross-National Comparison," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 15(1), pages 171-184, March.
    10. Wayne Lewchuk & Marlea Clarke & Alice de Wolff, 2008. "Working without commitments: precarious employment and health," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 22(3), pages 387-406, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jonathan V. Hall & Alan B. Krueger, 2015. "An Analysis of the Labor Market for Uber's Driver-Partners in the United States," Working Papers 587, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    2. Jenny Chesters & Hernan Cuervo, 2019. "Adjusting to new employment landscapes: Consequences of precarious employment for young Australians," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 30(2), pages 222-240, June.
    3. Basu, Arnab K. & Chau, Nancy H. & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2019. "Wage fairness in a subcontracted labor market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 24-42.
    4. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2019. "Understanding Trends in Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States," NBER Working Papers 25425, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ryan Finnigan & Jo Mhairi Hale, 2017. "Working 9 to 5? Unionization and work variability, 2004-2013," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2017-002, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    6. Cristiano Codagnone & Fabienne Abadie & Federico Biagi, 2016. "The Future of Work in the ‘Sharing Economy’. Market Efficiency and Equitable Opportunities or Unfair Precarisation?," JRC Research Reports JRC101280, Joint Research Centre.
    7. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    8. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Matthieu Lequien & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," CEP Discussion Papers dp1516, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Mariona Lozano & Elisenda Rentería, 2019. "Work in Transition: Labour Market Life Expectancy and Years Spent in Precarious Employment in Spain 1986–2016," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 145(1), pages 185-200, August.
    10. Werner Eichhorst & Ulf Rinne, 2017. "Digital Challenges for the Welfare State," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(04), pages 03-08, December.
    11. Seán Ó Riain & Amy Erbe Healy, 2024. "Workplace regimes in Western Europe, 1995–2015: Implications for intensification, intrusion, income and insecurity," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 45(2), pages 415-446, May.
    12. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    13. Joseph Choonara, 2020. "The Precarious Concept of Precarity," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 427-446, September.
    14. Rosa Abraham, 2017. "Informality in the Indian Labour Market: An Analysis of Forms and Determinants," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 60(2), pages 191-215, June.
    15. Delores V. Mullings & Sulaimon Giwa & Karun K. Karki & Sobia Shaikh & Amoaba Gooden & Elaine Brown Spencer & Willow Anderson, 2021. "The Settlement and Integration Experience of Temporary Foreign Workers Living in an Isolated Area of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 1085-1104, September.
    16. Datta, Nikhil, 2019. "Willing to pay for security: a discrete choice experiment to analyse labour supply preferences," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103390, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Jill Rubery & Isabelle Bi-Swinglehurst & Anthony Rafferty, 2024. "Part-time work and productivity," Insight Papers 031, The Productivity Institute.
    18. Konstantinos Pouliakas & Wieteke S. Conen, 2023. "Multiple job-holding: Career pathway or dire straits?," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 3562-3562, December.
    19. Gimenez-Nadal, José Ignacio & Molina, José Alberto & Sevilla, Almudena, 2021. "Temporal Flexibility, Breaks at Work, and the Motherhood Wage Gap," IZA Discussion Papers 14578, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Tracy Anderson & Matthew Bidwell, 2019. "Outside Insiders: Understanding the Role of Contracting in the Careers of Managerial Workers," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(5), pages 1000-1029, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Community participation; employment precarity index; household well-being; measuring; precarious employment; standard employment relationship (SER);
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J88 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:28:y:2017:i:3:p:402-419. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.