SICENTERLjubljana, Slovenia

   Long Term Trends in Atypical

Forms of Employment

Professor Pavle Sicherl

SICENTER and University of Ljubljana

Email: Pavle.Sicherl@sicenter.si; www.sicenter.siCopyright © 1994-2005 P. Sicherl All rights reserved

Prepared for the international conference Atypical Forms of Employment Expansion, Pecs, March 30, 2006

Work flexibility

• The issue of flexible employment and of optimal balance between flexibility and security is a major issue of economic, social and political importance

• It is a very complex problem and it will be a permanent issue of continuous adjustments to changing situations and preferences

Multiple perspectives

• There are at least three perspectives of different stakeholders with different sets of preferences and instruments :

• approach centered on the personal level (individual and family),

• activity-centered approach (workplace activity like business and institutions)

• the society-centered approach

Statistical picture

• The results are from the EU Households, Work and Flexibility (HWF) project, with eight participating countries (NL, UK, S, SI, CZ, HU, BG, RO)

• The flexibility of work is a considerably broader topic than the atypical forms of employment – the study of these forms through statistical sources complemented the surveys in these countries

Background

• The most characteristic trend of the last decades is the accelerating speed of change in many fields

• As pointed out by Beck (2000), the risk regime prevails in every field, economy, society and polity, meaning that the future of work will involve more that one direction of development, within and across a number of different dimensions

Prevailing trends

• All three indicators analysed (percent of part-time, fixed-term temporary in total employment and percent of self-employed persons in non-agricultural employees)

• show the increase in the 20 developed countries with very few exceptions (Kalleberg, 2000)

• but the differences among the countries remain considerable

Differences among HWF countries

• There are large differences in different kinds of atypical forms of employment between the group of developed EU countries and the group of candidate countries in the HWF project.

• In the three developed EU countries the most important atypical form of employment is part-time work, for the candidate countries both self-employment and fixed term contract are more important atypical forms than the part-time work.

Shares of the three atypical forms of employment in total employment in 2001

  NL S UK   SI CZ HU   BG RO

Self-employment as % of total employment 13.8 5 11.7   11.8 14.6 13.9   13.7 25.7

Part-time employment as % of total employment 42.2 24.1 24.9   6.1 4.3 3.3   3.4 16.8

Fixed term contracts as % of total employment 14.3 13.5 6.8   10.8 6.9 6.4   5.7 1.6

 

Distribution of employment by sectors

  NL S UK SI CZ HU BG RO

Share of employment in services 76.7 74.1 73.7 51.4 54.6 59.4 57.6 29.7

Share of employment in industry 19.8 23.3 24.8 38.6 40.5 34.5 32.7 25.8

Share of employment in agriculture 3.4 2.6 1.4 9.9 4.9 6.1 9.7 44.4

 

Activity rates total and by gender

  NL S UK SI CZ HU BG RO

Activity rate per population aged 15-64 75.8 75.2 75.6 67.5 70.7 59.7 63.3 68.3

Male activity rate per population aged 15-64 84.3 76.9 83 72.5 78.5 67.6 67.8 74.3

Female activity rate per population aged 15-64 67.1 73.4 68.1 62.5 63 52.2 59.1 62.4Source: European Commission (2002)

Differences in development level

• The importance and economic and social impact of atypical forms may be different in countries at different levels of development

• The GDP per capita at purchasing power parity was in 2005 in Slovenia 75%, in Czech Republic 67% and in Hungary 57% of the EU15 average.

• Expressing it in past time perspective, time distance behind the EU15 average was 17 years for Slovenia, 21 years for CZ and 29 years for Hungary.

Estimates of time distances for the past and time distances (projected) at the level of EU15 average GDP per capita for 2005 (Scenario:

growth rate in selected countries is 4%)

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

Time

EU

15 a

vera

ge

for

2005

=10

0

EU15 SI CZ HU

HU 14 years

SI 7 years

Backward looking S-time-distances for EU15 averageForward looking S-time-distances

for EU15 average for 2005

S-time-distance for SI 17 years

© P. Sicherl 2006

CZ 10 yearsS-time-distance for CZ 21 years

S-time-distance for HU 29 years

EU15

Time distance measure of disparities in development

• S-time-distance measures the distance between points in time when two compared countries attained the same level of GDP per capita (PPP)

• Looking backwards, it tells us that the present value of GDP per capita (PPP) for Slovenia was attained in EU15 average already in 1988, for CZ in 1984 and for Hungary in 1976.

• Looking forward, if these countries would grow by 4% per annum in the future, Slovenia would reach 2005 level of EU15 average in 7 years, Cz in10 years and Hungary in 14 years.

Large differences in part-time share

• The indicator women employed part-time as a percentage of all employed women amounts to a very high 71.3% in the Netherlands, 44.1% in the UK, and 36.4% in Sweden. The corresponding values for candidate countries vary from 7.4% in Slovenia to 3.7% in Bulgaria.

• The low value for candidate countries is due to the lack of tradition of part-time work, higher industry orientation and the fact that at the lower wage level in these countries such jobs are not as attractive as in developed countries.

• For instance, if wage level is approximated by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, in 2001 a hypothetical employee in Netherlands would with 26 hours per week earn as much as in Slovenia in 42 hours per week.

Atypical jobs are not necessary bad or undesirable jobs

• Roughly speaking, the average value of the sum of the three categories of atypical forms of employment for the three EU developed countries may be twice as high as the corresponding sum for the participating candidate countries.

• All the three EU countries show the share of the three categories of atypical work in total employment higher than 40%.

• This is a good example to prove that one should not start from an assumption, explicit or implicit, that atypical jobs are necessary substandard jobs. This is an important consideration between countries as well as between individuals.

Preferences in developed countries

• In the EU15 in 2000 59.3% of those employed part-time did not want a full-time job, among women the percentage was 65.1% (the percentage of women came as high as 80.2% in the UK, 79.3% in Germany, 77.8% in the Netherlands).

• In the EU15 only 15.8% answered that the reason for working part-time was that they could not find a full-time job.

• This is evidence that the indiscriminate use of an assumption that atypical jobs are inferior jobs is not warranted.

Some differences in emphasis

• OECD finds that ‘high and persistent unemployment remains a major problem, with a significant role played by “atypical forms” of employment. Part-time work has made a positive contribution in most countries, but sometimes it is a second-best choice’ (OECD, 1999).

• ILO in its World Employment Report states that ‘recent years have seen a significant growth of part-time or temporary contracts, of self-employment and of informal sector employment in developing countries. Flexible work arrangements can result in pressure to create low-skill jobs, and those accepting them may well receive less training. The overall result can be a general downgrading of the skill structure of the labour force’ (ILO, 1998).

Conclusion

• Atypical forms of employment are important, not necessarily inferior and in many cases they help to facilitate dealing with some enterprise and/or household and individual problems.

• Atypical forms of work can be a preferred choice for desired flexibility or an undesirable acceptance in the lack of other alternatives.

• Together with other aspects and instruments of flexibility needed to meet the coming challenges and risks they are to serve as means which will have to be adjusted to arrive at a social consensus of how to balance their benefits and costs for all stakeholders.