Precarious work in the UK – The devil in the measurement

• In Event: Measuring prevalence of precarious work and labour market exploitation – from lower-level abuses to human trafficking

Abstract

Across the Global North, there are growing concerns about precarious work. Precarity is in itself clearly not unlawful, but is widely considered to be a major contributor to people’s vulnerability to exploitation at work, the level of harms caused by such exploitation, and their ability to access justice. From a theoretical perspective, ‘precarious work’ can be approached in a multitude of ways with several competing definitions of the concept. Conversely, this presentation will be concerned by how this problem can be tackled empirically, by outlining alternative ways to identify precarious workers using the Understanding Society Survey, the largest household panel survey in the world. We will use four variables from this survey: (1) non-traditional employment, (2) low income, (3) racial or ethnic minority background, and (4) working for a small firm. Using formative measurement models (underpinned by principal component analysis) we will show how different assumptions are reflected in (1) the changes to the measurement model; (2) the estimation of the prevalence of precarious work; and (3) the life paths of workers. We will argue that you need to consider all these aspects to arrive at a cogent and convincing definition of precarious work and recommend a general step-by-step framework how similar complex structures should be tackled in future research.

Authors

• Krisztián Pósch, University College London

• Ella Cockbain, UCL

• Sam Scott, University of Gloucestershire

• Ben Bradford, University College London

• Jack Beadsworth, UCL

• Virginia Mantouvalou, UCL