Bad Jobs in Britain

Abstract

The rapid growth in nonstandard forms of employment toward the end of the 20th century has fuelled claims about the spread of “bad jobs” within Anglo-American capitalism. Research from the United States indicates that such jobs have more bad characteristics than do permanent jobs after controlling for workers’ personal characteristics, family status, and occupation. We apply a version of the bad characteristics approach to British data and find that despite some institutional differences with the United States, (notably, in employer welfare provision), the British case also supports the hypothesis that nonstandard employment (part-time, temporary, and fixed term) increases workers’ exposure to bad job characteristics.