The employment insecurity index: first results from using an index to measure the quality of employment in a multidimensional way

Background. During the past decades, standard employment declined in favour of nonstandard, less protected and flexible employment settings. The modification of ideal-typical post-second world war standard employment is not reducible to the emergence of "atypical contracts" alone. Rather, this modification occurs alongside different dimensions: contracts, rewards and rights, working time regulations, career development prospects, collective representation and possibilities for workers' empowerment. In our contribution, a multidimensional indicator of employment insecurity covering each of these dimensions is presented and described. Methods. Data from the EUROFOUND 2010 European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) are used. This cross-sectional dataset contains information on more than 30,000 wageearners from all EU-countries and candidate or affiliated countries. The index is based on 12 employment-related indicators: (1) type of employment contract; (2) low pay; (3) (involuntary) part-time employment; (4) availability of benefits; (5) intensive working times; (6) working time flexibility; (7) uncompensated exceptional working times; (8) training provided by the employer; (9) availability of an employee representative; (10) information on occupational health and safety, (11) communication and participation with superiors; (12) selfdetermination over the work schedule. The 12 indicators are all recoded to the same range, subsequently summed and standardised attributing equal weights to each indicator. Results. Descriptive and multivariate analyses reveal at the level of individual employees, that high employment insecurity is more common in women, younger workers, lower educated, service and elementary occupations, workers from smaller organisations and organisations from the primary and service sector. Employment insecurity is positively related with mental and general health complaints and negatively related with the ability to stay in employment until later age, job satisfaction, good work-family-interaction and absenteeism. Conclusion. This composed index provides innovative insights into the structuring of the quality of employment in the contemporary labour market and complements traditional approaches using self-perceived job insecurity or types of employment contracts.