Changing Working Conditions at the Onset of the Twenty-First Century: Facts from International Datasets

Abstract

Modern societies are currently undergoing accelerated social change (see also Chap. 4). In this chapter, we are interested in whether these societal changes influence individual working conditions. More specifically, it is argued that the speeding up of production, consumption, and decision processes due to the implementation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and increased international competition confront employees with work intensification and increasing job insecurity. Using data from the European Working Conditions Surveys, we analyze trends in work intensity and job insecurity in Europe from 2000 onwards; using data from the Health and Retirement Study as well as the German Socio-Economic Panel, we also model individual change trajectories from 2000 onwards. The results show that employees differ in the extent to which they are confronted with changes in work intensity and job insecurity. European trend data suggest that work intensification occurred basically in conservative welfare states (i.e., Germany, France, and Spain), but not in the United Kingdom or Finland. Individual change trajectories show that nearly 30 % of German and American workers have experienced an increase in work intensity over the past decade. Less-educated workers are the most affected. Moreover, job insecurity has risen for a majority of employees in Europe and America. Especially, well-educated workers who have thus far been in rather stable employment relations perceived an increase in job insecurity.

This research was partly supported by grant no.: P23377-G17 from the Austrian Science Fund.

Appendix

The EWCS is one activity of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. The survey started in 1990/1991 and aims at gathering information about working conditions across different sectors and occupational levels in several European countries (ranging from 12 in 1990/1991 to 34 in 2010; Eurofond 2012). The EWCS is a trend dataset, which covers a random sample of employed and self-employed workers every 5 years. It is representative according to occupation, gender, age, sector, and company size (Paoli 1997). In 1991, 12,500 workers were interviewed; in 2010, 44,000 workers participated in the survey. Among other aspects, participants were asked about their working time, nature of work, work organization, and the impact of work on their health. For the present study, we used data from 2000, 2005, and 2010.

The G-SOEP has been initially conducted by the German Institute for Economic Research in 1984 and has been repeated annually since then. Every year, about 11,000 households participate in the study and provide information about, e.g., household composition, occupational biographies, employment, and earnings. For our analyses, we used data from 2001 to 2009 focusing on the work context (German Socio-Economic Panel, G-SOEP, 2010).

The HRS is a longitudinal panel study conducted by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan that collects data of about 26,000 Americans aged 50 years and older (Burkhauser and Gertler 1995). The panel was launched in 1992 and has been conducted biannually since then. Through interviews, data are – among other aspects – gathered on health, work, retirement, income, wealth, and family characteristics. In the present analyses, we focused on data from 2000 onwards.