E pluribus unum? A critical survey of job quality indicators

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing concern in Europe about the lack of an established comparable measure of job quality to complement the widely accepted quantitative indicators in the formulation and evaluation of European employment policies. The aim of this paper is to offer a guided tour around the different views and existing proposals of job quality indicators, mainly from a European perspective. First, we discuss the methodological decisions that have to be made in the process of designing an indicator of job quality, from both a theoretical and methodological/technical perspective. Second, these arguments are used to discuss critically the different empirical approaches to the measurement of job quality proposed in the literature. We finish by presenting some recommendations for the construction of a job quality index for policy purposes. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. All rights reserved.