Employment and the Quality of Work

How has employment in Ireland been affected by the Celtic Tiger? We are all familiar with the dramatic growth in employment and the equally dramatic fall in unemployment. However some commentators suggest that much of the employment growth during the 1990s was concentrated in households that were already attached to the labour market and that many people were left behind by the boom. This thesis also holds that the Celtic Tiger was accompanied by a deterioration in the quality of work in terms of security, control and skill, and dismisses most employment growth as unskilled. There has been a particular focus on the role of part-time work, with the assumption that part-time work is of poor quality and is casualised.

In this chapter we examine the veracity of this view of the effects of the recent economic boom. In the first half of the chapter we describe some of the major changes in the Irish labour market over the past decade. We also present evidence on the groups who have benefited from the employment growth and consider who has been excluded. Research on work-poverty within households suggests that there has been a steep drop in the number of households without anyone in employment, suggesting that the benefits of growth did extend to these groups. However, there remain groups such as the disabled, lone parents, etc., who still experience difficulties in entering the labour market. This section also draws on existing research to discuss trends in average earnings and earnings dispersion.

In the second half of the chapter we assess the extent to which the quality of work has changed. Trends in the quality of work have been the subject of considerable international debate, so it is of interest to examine the evidence as to whether there has been a deterioration in the quality of work in the Irish economy. To answer this question we examine four aspects of job quality: autonomy, work pressure, security and job satisfaction.