Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/33231 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 1610
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Job quality may usefully be thought of as depending on both job values (how much workers care about different job outcomes) and the job outcomes themselves. Here both cross-section and panel data are used to examine changes in job quality in OECD countries over the 1990s. Despite rising wages and falling hours, overall job satisfaction is either stable or declining. These movements are not due to changes in the type of workers, nor to changes in their job values. A number of pieces of evidence point to stress and hard work as being strong candidates for what has gone wrong with employees' jobs. We find evidence of increasing inequality in a number of job outcomes. Some groups of workers have done better than others: the young and the higher-educated have been insulated against downward movements in job quality, and there is tentative evidence that trade unions may have protected their members against adverse job outcomes.
Subjects: 
job values
job outcomes
job satisfaction
effort
JEL: 
J28
J3
J81
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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