Job Quality and the Economics of New Labour: A Critical Appraisal Using Subjective Survey Data
Posted: 16 Jun 2008
Date Written: November 2007
Abstract
This paper assesses the record on job quality during the early term of office of the New Labour government by interpreting, from a political economy perspective, changes in a variety of subjective measures of job quality taken from several different data sources. We find some improvements in job quality over the period 1998-2004; however we argue that these improvements have arisen not because of New Labour's policies towards the workplace but because of low and falling rates of unemployment. Despite recent improvements, a large number of workers in Britain remain in low quality jobs and, without a radical change of policy direction, sustained and substantial progress in the quality of work will remain elusive.
Keywords: Economics of happiness, Job quality, New Labour, Political economy
JEL Classification: B50, I31, J8, J28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation