The Lisbon Strategy, launched in 2000, called for creating more and better jobs in Europe. Employment targets were also outlined for employment rates for different population groups by 2010: 70% of the working age population; 60% for women of active age and 50% for elderly workers.

Overall some progress has been achieved in bringing more Europeans into paid employment and cutting unemployment rates. The goal of better jobs however has been less ardently pursued. There is a widespread perception that many new jobs created are “bad” jobs. Increasingly workers are being asked, or forced, to work longer and/or more unsocial hours and to accept fixed term and other precarious work contracts.

The ETUI’s Job Quality Index (JQI)
It is against this background that the ETUI has developed a Job Quality Index (JQI).

The JQI is an attempt to shed some light on the question of whether the goal of more jobs has been pursued at the cost of better jobs and how European countries compare with each other with regard to job quality. It also makes it possible to compare job quality for men and women and is designed to be able to monitor changes, regularly, over time.

How the JQI works
In order to reflect the different aspects that define quality work, the JQI consists of six sub-indices:

• wages,
• non-standard forms of employment,
• work-life balance and working time,
• working conditions and job security,
• access to training and career advancement, and
• collective interest representation and participation.

The JQI covers all EU-27 countries and also provides an overall JQI for the EU. Separate indices have been calculated for men and women.

Constructing the JQI - Methodology
The data used for the index is sourced from the European Labour Force Survey, European Working Conditions Survey [1], the AMECO database [2], the Survey of Income and Living Conditions and the ICTWSS database. In certain areas caution is required when interpreting the figures due to a number of important data restrictions.

For example, while recognising that non-standard employment can be problematic for job quality it is also necessary to avoid misinterpreting the reasons for which workers opt for part-time work or temporary work. Only workers that have stated that they could not find a full-time job or a permanent job (and are therefore involuntarily accepting a non-standard form of employment) are considered in this sub-index.

A full outline of the methodology used and unavoidable constraints faced in creating the JQI can be found in ETUI’s Working Paper entitled “Putting a number on job quality? Constructing a European Job Quality Index (available below).

Initial results
The Nordic countries together with the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are currently performing best in terms of job quality. Poland, Greece and Romania registered the worst job quality performance.

Men and women experience substantial differences in job quality in the different sub-indices: women do much worse in terms of pay and non-standard employment, but better in the areas of work-life balance and working-time and working conditions. Assuming equal weighting of the six sub-indices, in most EU countries men and women have similar overall results on job quality.

Two striking individual results are the United Kingdom that comes third in the JQI and Germany that comes in slightly below the EU27 average. The United Kingdom does particularly well in skills and career development, on working time and work-life balance and on working conditions and job security. Germany shows good results only on wages. It does badly with regard to non-standard employment, working conditions and job security. It also scores slightly below the EU-27 average on skills and career development and collective interest representation.

To some extent data limitations may be affecting the results, exaggerating British performance skills and career development, for instance, or underestimating Germany’s collective bargaining system. However, our results are in line with findings of other studies, which suggest a need to reflect on some of our preconceptions about relative country performance within Europe.

Questions or comment?

Email to Andrew Watt or Janine Leschke

Job Quality – sources of information

• “How do European countries compare with each other with regard to job quality ?”
  ETUI Working Paper – Job Quality in Europe (Janine Leschke, Andrew Watt)

• Outlining the methodology used in creating the ETUI’s JQI
  ETUI Working Paper – “Putting a number on job quality? Constructing a European Job Quality Index" (Janine Leschke, Andrew Watt)

• Employment rising… but European workers not receiving fair share of economic wealth
  Benchmarking Working Europe 2008 Chapter 1

• More and better jobs? – Labour market developments in the euro area since 1999 – Companion report to the ELNEP economic forecast and policy recommendations, May 2008 and executive summary

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[1] Produced by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound)
[2] AMECO is the annual macro-economic database of the European Commission's Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs