Does employment status matter for job quality?

Two-thirds of the EU labour force are in permanent, full-time employment; the remaining one-third has a non-standard employment status, meaning temporary or part-time employment or self-employment. Given the variety of employment statuses, it is worth asking whether working conditions differ across them.

This policy brief uses data from the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey to investigate the job quality associated with different employment statuses in the 28 EU Member States. It finds that temporary and part-time workers as well as self-employed workers without employees are more likely to experience poorer job quality than permanent employees.