Abstract
This article focuses on the growth of non-standard employment arrangements in those segments of the labour market in developing countries that were previously the locus of ‘standard’ jobs. While informality is still a significant concern in developing countries, the increase in non-standard employment has compounded problems for workers and the labour market, adding to the already heightened levels of insecurity. In addition, by weakening the employment relationship, enterprises have less of an incentive to invest in the training of their workers or in productivity-enhancing technology or organizational improvements, potentially undermining economic development. Never the less, these issues can be addressed through regulations that lessen differences in contractual arrangements, as well as by restricting the use of non-standard employment. Governments should consider instituting and enforcing these measures for the benefit of workers, but also for firms, and for economic development in general.
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Source: INEI (2015).
Source: Aleksynska and Berg 2016
Source: ILO 2016
Source: Own calculations based on World Bank Enterprise Survey, World Bank (2014)
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Notes
See the special issue of the Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal for a discussion of the ‘fissured workplace’ around the world (Volume 31, Issue 1).
This definition is different from the one used in national statistics and is narrower as it excludes temporary workers employed for more than one year or having the promise of renewal of their temporary contract. The survey also does not cover temporary workers in non-registered companies. As a result, the firm-level numbers expanded to the national level represent a lower bound on the number of temporary workers in a given country. The advantage of the data is that the question is uniform across all countries, so that the figures are genuinely comparable (World Bank 2011).
For details, see George and Chattopadhyay (2016).
Following criticism of the Employing Workers Index by the ILO and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the World Bank moved the Employing Workers Index to an annex and did not consider the scores from this indicator in the aggregate ranking of the ease of doing business. For more information see www.doingbusiness.org.
See, for example, Mares (2001).
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Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a presentation given at the 58th Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics, Guwahati, India, 2016. I would like to thank the organizers of the conference for their invitation to present this work at the conference. The paper draws on work done in preparation of the 2016 ILO report, Non-standard employment around the world: Understanding challenges, shaping prospects. I would like to thank my colleagues, Mariya Aleksynska, Valerio De Stefano and Martine Humblet, for their collaboration on this report. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the ILO.
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Berg, J. Contractual status, worker well-being and economic development. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 60, 121–136 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-017-0092-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-017-0092-1