Transcript Slide 1

SICENTER
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Long Term Trends in Atypical
Forms of Employment
Professor Pavle Sicherl
Prepared for the international conference Atypical Forms of Employment
Expansion, Pecs, March 30, 2006
SICENTER and University of Ljubljana
Email: [email protected]; www.sicenter.si
Copyright © 1994-2005 P. Sicherl All rights reserved
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 parttime work, for the candidate countries both selfemployment 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
67.1
73.4
68.1
62.5
63
52.2
59.1
62.4
Female activity rate per population aged
15-64
Source: 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%)
Backward looking S-time-distances for EU15 average
Forward looking S-time-distances
for EU15 average for 2005
100
95
90
EU15
EU15 average for 2005=100
85
80
S-time-distance for SI 17 years
SI 7 years
75
70
CZ 10 years
S-time-distance for CZ 21 years
65
HU 14 years
60
S-time-distance for HU 29 years
55
50
45
40
35
30
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
Time
© P. Sicherl 2006
EU15
SI
CZ
HU
2005
2010
2015
2020
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 secondbest 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.