Good, Bad and Very Bad Part-time Jobs for Women? Re-examining the Importance of Occupational Class for Job Quality since the ‘Great Recession’ in Britain

an article by Tracey Warren (University of Nottingham, UK) and Clare Lyonette
(University of Warwick, UK) published in Work, Employment and Society Volume 12 Issue 4 (August 2018)

Abstract

Britain has long stood out in Europe for its extensive but poor-quality part-time labour market dominated by women workers, who are concentrated in lower-level jobs demanding few skills and low levels of education, offering weak wage rates and restricted advancement opportunities.

This article explores trends in part-time job quality for women up to and beyond the recession of 2008/9, and asks whether post-recessionary job quality remains differentiated by occupational class.

A pre-recessionary narrowing of the part-time/full-time gap in job quality appears to have been maintained for the women in higher-level part-time jobs, while part- and full-timers in lower-level jobs suffered the worst effects of the recession, signalling deepening occupational class inequalities among working women.

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