Measurement of Job Quality: Latest developments from the EC side Meeting on the measurement of quality of employment (14-16 October 2009, Geneva, Switzerland) Matteo Governatori European Commission DG Employment – Employment Analysis

EU concept of job quality still valid Two Commission Communications ( COM(2001) 313 and COM(2003) 728) have provided a broad framework for promoting quality in work This includes 10 dimensions, each of them quantified by specific indicators In 2003 improving quality and productivity at work becomes an overarching objective of the EES The framework has not been revised since and it is still valid today …and job quality has remained an important concern for the EU over past years (e.g. EPSCO Council January 2007)

JQ is one of many priorities in the employment field Most of the selected indicators have been included in the Compendium used to monitor Member States’ progress relative to the Employment Guidelines, …whereas the downturn in the early 2000 has somewhat shifted attention towards employment growth …and the interplay between flexicurity, which has become the main framework for employment policies, and JQ has not yet been fully spelled out Hence, the EU JQ concept has not been used as such to monitor progress in the Member States

Commission Interest on JQ still strong However, concerns have been raised that substantial job creation registered in the EU until 2008 have gone together with a deterioration of working conditions for a large share of such jobs, calling for renewed efforts to assess job quality developments A chapter on JQ was included in the 2008 Employment in Europe report The chapter put the EU job quality framework in the perspective of the broader socio-economic literature and put forward a number of suggestions to complement it A taxonomy of job quality models in the EU based on such an enlarged framework was then presented

JQ in Employment in Europe Absence of indicators on wages, work intensity and work organisation were pointed out as shortcoming of the EU framework,… together with the inclusion of economy-wide variables, which do not correspond to characteristics of specific jobs The proposed enlarged framework is centred on four dimensions: Socio-economic security; Training; Working conditions; Reconciliation and gender balance …and, as illustrated by Principal Component Analysis, allows for a better characterisation of different job quality models in the EU

JQ in recent work by ETUC The EU Trade Unions confederation (ETUC) has also made an attempt to measure JQ trends across EU Member States (Leschke and Watt, 2008) A Job Quality index (JQI) is calculated as a composite of a set of sub-indices corresponding to six dimensions of the concept: wages, non- standard forms of employment, work-life balance and working time, working conditions and job security, training and career advancement, collective interest representation and voice/participation. The index is used to compare JQ outcomes across countries and over time ( )