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Economic Sociology Notes
Precarious Work


Ref
...
: Green, Gallie

Has Job Insecurity Risen?
o
o



Threat of unemployment – distance of state working from state of being
unemployed part of quality of job
Uncertainty and ambiguity
 Stress
Impact of insecurity on well-being at least as negative as impact of being
unemployed
 Source of ill health, job dissatisfaction, impact on households
Social integration through work
 Ref
...
: Beck, Castells, Sennett
 View of increasing job insecurity due to changing structure of labour market
 Flexibilisation due to global economic integration, new technologies,
neoliberalism

Is Insecurity an Endemic Feature of Capitalism?
o

Surveys (e
...
“Do you think there is any chance of losing job in the next 12 months?”
show perceived insecurity rises and falls with unemployment levels

Economic Sociology Notes
o
o



Cross National Variation
o
o
o
o



Four types of flexibility
 Numerical/external
 Functional
 Temporal
 Wage

Perceived Job Security
o
o

o


Risk of job loss/temporary work not necessarily problematic
Atypical work not always paid much less
Dead-end; provides inferior social institutions; less collective representation
 Ref
...
: Green, Gallie
However, Green does find evidence for significant effect of global economic
integration in UK
 More insecurity among workers in foreign owned firms/firms competing in
low wage economies

By country
EU15 surveys 1996-2001
 Highest
 Denmark – 2
...
85
 Sweden – 1
...
74
 Lowest
 France/Spain – 1
...
: Gallie

Temporary Workers
o
o

o

As % of workforce
Highest
 Poland
 Spain
 Portugal
Lowest
 UK
 Estonia
 Bulgiari

Economic Sociology Notes

o
o
o

o

o


High Quality Secure V Low Quality Insecure
o
o

o

o

o



1996 and 2001 combined
Nordic
 HQ – 48
...
9%
Continental
 HQ – 38
...
2%
Liberal
 HQ – 34
...
8%
Southern
 HQ – 30
...
3%

Insider Outsider Divide
o
o



 Lithuania
 Romania
Ref
...

 Latvia
 Lithuania
Ref
...
: Hauserman and Shwander

Outcomes of Dualisation
o
o

Labour Market Dualism
 Earnings, training, promotion
Social Protection Dualism
 Social rights, benefits

Economic Sociology Notes



Intra-Regime Variation
o
o
o



Labour Market Dualism
o

o

o



Gross Wage Gap
 Highest in liberal and continental
 Nordic lower but Sweden reaches continental levels
 Spain – poor wages for insiders too
Access to training
 Outsiders have less access in all countries
 Particularly so in liberal and continental
Promotion
 Gap even bigger than training
 Significant in liberal and continental

Conclusions
o
o

o
o



Liberal and continental regimes more dualised
Continental dualisation is more gendered than liberal/southern
Southern regimes – young people more likely to be outsiders

Job insecurity not a new phenomenon
No clear universal trends
 Cross national variation related to unemployment levels and use of
temporary contracts
Association between atypical work and bad jobs mediated by institutions
 Weaker relationship in Nordic states
Sense of uncertainty and risk is pertinent
 Economies more diversified
 Less simple career choices and paths
 Privatisation, particularly of universities (temporary academics)
 ICT – flexibilisation of production and work e
...
ICT and business services

Reading I; Beck (2000) The Risk Regime; How the Work Society is Becoming Risk Society
o

The Fordist Regime
 First key category is that of regimes of accumulation internally connected to
the dominant mode of regulation
 Ref
...
which allow rapid increase in
productivity and profits via rising wages, also in mass consumption

Economic Sociology Notes


o

o
o

This form of production created in society where people’s lives as
highly standardised as sheet steel from which cars welded together
 Fordist growth regime of mass production, labour & consumption mean
fixed times for holidays/other activities that underpinned and
standardised life together in family, neighbourhood and community
 Also shaped and reinforced by a mode of regulation which
supported the growth regime culturally, legally and politically
 Involved wide range of strategies, actors & conditions which tied
company management, TUs, banks, politicians & Govs to relatively
uniform philosophy of growth & corresponding set of measures that
held out promise of success
 Cultural Political Targets
 Citizens in full time employment who had expectations of rising
living standards & job security, while main recipes were workforce
participation, free collective bargaining, strong Tus, gov
...
investment & new jobs
 Model permitted/compelled different paths to be taken in different
countries
o Countries found own way to Fordism
The Risk Regime
 Ongoing debate on rise and fall of Fordist mass production, consumption
and standardised full employment belongs to paradigm of first modernity
 Second Modernity
 Risk regime prevails in every field- economy, society, polity
 Appropriate distinction not Fordist V post Fordist or Ind
...

 Between securities, certainties & clearly defined boundaries of first
modernity V insecurities, uncertainties & loss of boundaries in second
modernity
 Fordism = standardisation of work; RR = individualisation of work
 Fordism took no account of damage to environment, RR makes central the Q
of how capital and labour handle both goods and bads of prosperity
 Society corresponding to Fordism was standardised
 But with RR, people expected to make own life plan, be mobile and
provide for themselves in various ways
 New centre is becoming the precarious centre
 Poverty is being dynamised
 Cut up and distributed across life sections
 Becoming “normal experience” at centre of society; less & less
temporary poverty
Fordism presupposed the boundaries of the State while RR is about compulsion to
relocate and prevail on the world market and in world society
Ambivalence of the Risk Regime
 One hand, risk is about “dancing on the edge of a volcano”- must find
courage to do so to prevail
 Other hand, risk means creeping/galloping threat to human civilisation
 Possibility of progress turning into barbarism

Economic Sociology Notes


o

o

o

Publicly perceived risks that politicise people because they throw up the Q
of responsibility precisely where it is difficult or impossible to answer
 Such ambivalence of RR may help distinguish 2 paths for society beyond full
employment
 Give rise to political controversy
 One hand, loss of security of Fordism’s standardised work welcomed/
politically accelerated
 Erosion of politics/society by politics/society
 Q of side effects of American Way which has become model for
modernisation in all parts of the world
 Other hand, dominance of RR poses Q of how loss of security can be
converted into blossoming of social creativity
 How security & political freedom can be brought into harmony
 Utopia of political civil society
 May be the European road to the Second Modernity
 RR; future of work will involve more than one direction of development
 Growing number of different dimensions
 Individualisation/pluralisation against backdrop of fabricated insecurities/
uncertainties
Dimensions of RR
 Globalisation, Ecologisation, Digitalisation, Individualisation and
Politicisation of Work
 RRs are networked regimes- cut across and through sectors and disciplines
which pose the question of society anew
Globalisation
 Fordism- work/production always tied to a locality
 RR sets off a social despatialisation of work and production
 Not at all predictable in consequences
 Virtual
 Not in the sense of being fictitious but in terms of new kind of
translocal organisation of production and work
 Globalised Risk
 Unpredictable consequences of this diffuse mode of work
 Risk of transnational capital flows predictably affect labour that is
culturally tied to the locality and threaten the foundations of society
and the State
 Not impossible to ensure oneself against these risk of globalisation
Ecologisation
 When tech
...
6 times more food,
energy, water, transport, oil & minerals than parents
Digitalisation
 Compels and facilitates globalisation and individualisation
 Global digitalisation and networking aimed at an economy that will have
capacity to operate as unit in real time right across planet
 Spread of new kind of literacy
 Those who do not master language of computers will be excluded
from circle of communication
 “Grammar” of digitalisation not only thing shaping people’s view of world
 Scale and objectives of the flexibilisation, virtualisation and
rationalisation of work
 No longer subject to either-or but to both-and
 At home and at work
 Isolated and connected to others
Individualisation
 Key result of flexibilisation of work
 Three aspects
 Lifeworld process of detraditionalisation
o Standard biography becomes elective or DIY biography; risk
biography
 Work is chopped up by time and contract
 Individualisation of consumption
Politicisation
 2 viewpoints/lines of development
 One hand; subpoliticisation of economy and work
o Resulting from fact that globalisation, ecologisation,
digitalisation and individualisation call into Q the basic
certainties of (Fordist) work and life; plus no single clear cut
solution for fashioning of production and work
 Other hand; Fordist consensus included the economic-political
compromise of the “worker citizen”
o Now in the wake of globalisation and individualization of
work, Fordist worker citizen sees the ground slipping away
beneath his feet and becomes politicised
o Therefore today’s key Qs different
 How can development and basic funding of a civil society responsible for
itself complement or even replace the State monopoly of public
expenditure?
 How should right to discontinuity in employment be created & protected?
Multi-employment and the open organisation of work?
 RR determines and identifies economic activity under conditions of world
open markets and competition

Economic Sociology Notes


o

o
o
o

o

Order-book situation, investment decision and management strategies
change from one year to the next, from one quarter to the next, even from
one week to the next
 RR means everything is possible and nothing can be foreseen or controlled
 When demand increases, companies must bring in expensive extra shifts
 Expensive social plans must be constructed in lengthy negotiations
 Employment system Europe past 100 years rested upon high degree of both
temporal and spatial standardisation of work contracts & labour deployment
 With risk regulation, developing destandardised, fragmented, plural
unemployment system, characterised by highly flexible, time intensive and
spatially decentralised firms of deregulated paid labour
 Boundaries between work and non-work starting to blur, re time space and
contractual content
 Type of spatially diffuse corporate organisation appearing
Flexibilisation of Working Time – Less Money, More Control
 Now as many labour time models as companies; no one of them is like other
 Vary according to the order situation and demand for employment
 E
...
Opel Russelsheim
 Now when no
...
g
...
of hours for period; up to them how
they distribute them
 Good for employers; employees receive no extra pay for temporary
increases in work
 Cutting costs not heads- flexibilisation as policy of redistribution
Neither the spatio-temporal nor the contractual destandardisation of paid work
applies uniformly or simultaneously to all branches of the employment system
Today, no telling where this destandardisation will run up against material and/or
political limits and which functional areas will remain untouched by it
Clear that flexibilisation will not be income neutral
 As working time is divided up, there is a downward redistribution of income
 I
...
collective decline across specialisms, occupations and hierarchies
 Working time policies therefore in a way distributive policies – create new
insecurities and inequalities in society
E
...
Volkswagen Wolfsburg
 Early 90s crisis symptoms sharper, costs exploded, fewer people wanted VW
 Suddenly 15,000 workers too many
 But co
...
at University of Seattle, on advisory board of renowned specialist
journal
 Yet decisive break through failed to come
 16 years of stumbling from one fixed term contract to next
 Now 50y/o, suspects dream of a chair will never be fulfilled
 Hasn’t even got his own office
 Roughly 45% uni lecturers share his fate
 Colleges save in several ways at once
 Pay is only 40% of regular prof
...
with tenure cannot
McJobs
 Earning so little that 2+ jobs needed to make living
 Ursula Munch – two jobs; 8 hours and 2 hours
 Total of 3 hours travel plus shopping, cleaning, cooking for children
 Full time job at McDonalds, side job as cleaner in council office
 Success stories of companies like McDonalds fail to acknowledge this
RR not only generates insecurity but also uncertainty about rules

Reading II; Doogan (2009) Flexible Labour Market and the Contingent Economy
o
o

o
o
o
o
o

o

Examines labour market outcomes said to express new forms of engagement
between employers & workers; characterised by precariousness & impermanence
Labour Market
 Signifier par excellence of societal transformations, embodying outcomes of
technological change, industrial and occupational restructuring,
deregulation, flexibilisation and individualisation
 If labour market outcomes misconstrued, will generate widespread public
misunderstanding re social transformation
Dominant public perception that labour market has changed but not for better
Departure from era of stability, security
Ref
...
: Ritzer (1993) McDonaldisation of service sector
TU power in decline

Transformation of work characterised by insecure or precarious
employment and intensification of labour process, both in terms of day to
day efforts and projected lengthening of working lives prior to retirement
Individualisation, Fragmentation and Flexibility
 Important to remember, not merely about job gains and losses in growing or
declining industries, contractual adjustments or distributional shifts in the
occupational structure
 Not change in jobs but fundamental change in employment relationship
 Loss of reciprocal obligations
Uncertainty/Insecurity
 Ref
...
: Beck (2000)
 Reflexive modernity
 Destandardisation of labour based on part time and temporary employment
 Political economy of insecurity; power struggle between political players and
non-territorial capital, finance and commerce
 Culminates in the Brazilianisation of the West
 Paid employment represents a minority experience, majority left to
eke out more precarious work
Ref
...
: Castells (1996)
 Information predicated on development of core labour force; disposable
labour force
 Individualisation
Critique of Beck, Sennett
 Scant regard for the current trends and statistical data in future projections
– offers visions rather than evidence
 Sennett also offers superficial account of erosion of character arising from
short term capitalism
Fragmentation and individualisation are extreme versions of labour market change

Economic Sociology Notes



o

o

o

Ref
...
: Doeringer and Piore (1971)
 Influential analysis of effects of poverty and discrimination in
primary and secondary labour markets
 Stressed the role of internal labour markets within firms
 Rewarded investment in human capital and correlated length of
time employed with career advancement and increased earnings
 But neoclassical economists unhappy with idea of 2 wage levels in
equilibria
 Mid-70s theory fell out of favour
 Deemed incompatible with neoclassical economics
 Dual labour market theory resurfaced again in mid 80s
Dual Labour Market Theory: 1980s
 1980s, dual labour market theory examined again due to debates re
economic restructuring
 Corporate restructuring represented emergence of second industrial divide
 Decline of mass production/mass consumer markets
 Rise of flexible specialisation
 Regulation Theory
 Offers Marxist variation on this theme
 Envisaged profound institutional restructuring in society
o Fordism gave way to post Fordism
 Significance of flexible production systems
 Ref
...
g
...
g
...

Temporary, Contingent, Casual Employment –Ref
...
emp
...
emp
...
g
...
help agency
workers, fixed terms contracts, on call workers and seasonal workers
 Over 1/3 temp workers agency staff Netherlands V 2
...
: Arne Kalleberg
 Chicago, by 1956; temp help industry had approx
...
3%-2
...
emp
...
: Peck and Theodore (2000)
 Explosion in temp emp
...
emp
...
: Polivka, Cohany and Hipple (2000)
 Non-standard workforce
 Largest group; independent contractors (6
...
agency staff (1%)
 Earnings across contingent workforce lower than non-contingent workforce
Part Time Employment
 “Flexiworkforce”
 First, crucial distinction between part time and temporary employment
 OECD study analysed part time work in OECD countries
 Significant international variation
 Relatively low in southern European countries, high in the UK,
Netherlands, Scandinavia
 Makes up largest element in non-standardised workforce
 Makes NB contribution to total employment growth
 Q; does labour market adjustment take place because of the characteristics
of the job and the job holder or because of the nature of the industry in
which its located
 Part time work particularly represented in service industries e
...
retailing,
education, health
 Men engage in PT work in early and later years while women make up
majority PT work
Most extreme form of numerical flexibility evident in seasonal employment of
migrants in agriculture
 Seasonal migrant farmworkers come from the poorest East European
countries e
...
Bulgaria, Romania, hired for summer months in N
...
America – fruit growers employ workers from
Haiti, Guatemala, Mexico
 But seasonal migrant farming cannot be said to be new economy
phenomenon
Shift work seen as too old fashioned (Fordism) to attract much academic debate/
attention
Flexitime usually discussed re families and WLB
Important not to attribute false homogeneity to atypical employment
 Deconstruct the periphery or secondary labour market
Rise of Student Labour Market
 Recent rise of student labour force
 Largely ignored by researchers
 Arises from changes in welfare regimes rather than industrial restructuring
 Last 2 decades, increased no
...
: Hoffman and Stein (2003)
Employment not just confined to summer months

Reading III; Guy Standing “The Precariat”
o

o

1970s Neo-Liberalism
 Neo-liberal ideology by economists/politicians
 Central plank
 Growth and development depended on market competitiveness
 Everything should be done to maximise competitiveness
 And to allow market principles to permeate all aspects of life
 Key theme – countries should increase labour market flexibility
 Came to mean an agenda for transferring risks and insecurities onto
workers and their families
 Result has been creation of global precariat
 No stability
 Political monster? Need for reform?
Origins of the Global Precariat
 May 1st 2001; Milan
 5000 students and social activists gather for “alternative” May Day
protest march
o Demonstrations marked first stirrings of global precariat
 Demanded migration, universal, basic income
 Stirred first in Western Europe, then took on global character
 Started as youth movement against EU encouragement of labour flexibility
and mobility
 Tension between precariat as victim; penalised and demonised by
mainstream institutions and policies, and precariat as heroes; rejecting
institutions in act of emotional and intellectual defiance
 Heroes included Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault
 Led to a lack of coherence
 What was aim?
 Who/What was enemy?
 But no effective “anger” yet as no political agenda/strategy had been
formed
 Search for symbols
 Dialectical character of internal debates
 Tensions within the precariat (still today)
 Used visuals/posters to unite young and old, natives and migrants
 But attracted little attention from outsiders
 Importance of symbols
 Help unite groups, build identity

Economic Sociology Notes

o

o

 Moving from symbols to political programmes
 Symbol of Euro May Day demonstrations
 Carnival, fun, atmosphere
 Mockery and humour
 Many actions daredevillish/anarchic rather than strategic/socially
threatening
 Intention to win friends and influence mainstream societies
 Participants in Euro May Day just tip of the iceberg
o Much larger element living in fear and insecurity
Globalisation’s Child
 1970s neoliberalism
 Disliked the state
 Saw the world as increasingly open
 Wanted drastic measures to avoid increased unemployment, decrease in
growth and accelerated poverty
 Roll back securities, tame trade unions
 Proved difficult as soc
...
Parties in Gov
...

 More and more with informal job status
...

 But other groups stand out too – e
...
convicted
 Currently having a temporary job is an indicator of being in the Precariat
 May be a stepping stone to the construction of a career
 But for most, step down to lower income status
 Policy makers encourage taking lower level jobs but this can lead to
lower income for years to come
 Another avenue into Precariat is via part time work
o Has become feature of tertiary economy
o Most countries part time is less than 30 hours per week
o Growth in part time has concealed unemployment and
underemployment
Anger, Anomie, Anxiety and Alienation
 Precariat experiences 4 As
 Anger
 Stems from frustration at blocked avenues for advancement,
seething resentment from cultural images for success
 Anomie
 Examined by Durkheim
 Feeling of passivity born of despair
 Stems from sustained defeat
 Compounded by condemnation

Economic Sociology Notes






Anxiety
 Chronic insecurity associated with teetering on the edge
 Dear of losing what they possess
Alienation
 Arises from knowing that what one is doing is not for one’s own
purpose or what one could respect or appreciate
 Simply done for others, at their behest
 Defining feature of proletariat
 Experience “failed occupationality”
o Adverse psychological effect

Reading II; Castells (1996) “Transformation of Work and Employment; Networkers, Jobless
and Flexitimers”
o
o
o

o

o

Process of work at core of social structure
Process of globalisation affects society at large mainly via technological and
managerial transformation of labour and emerging network enterprise
Historical Evolution of Employment
 Normally discussed re industrialism and post-industrial society
 Strongest empirical evidence for change
 Castells takes different approach
 Common trend unfolding but there is historical variation of
employment patterns according to specific institutions, culture and
political environments
 Examines evolution of employment structures 1920-1990 for the major
capitalist countries that make up the core of the global economy (G7)
 All in advanced stage of transition to information society
 Represent very distinct cultures and institutional systems
Post industrialism, the Service Economy and the Information Society
 Classical theory of post-industrialism combined three statements/
predictions that ought to be analytically differentiated
 Source of productivity and growth lies in the generation of
knowledge, extended to all realms of economic activity through
information processing
 Economic activity would shift from goods to services delivery; the
demise of agricultural employment would be followed by an
irreversible decline in manufacturing jobs to the benefit of service
jobs which would form a large proportion of employment
o The more advanced the economy, the more it would be
focused on services re employment and production
 New economy would increase the importance of occupations with a
high information and knowledge content in their activity –
managerial, technical and professional occupations would grow
faster than any other jobs and would be core of social structure
 These 3 statements anchor the theory at the level of the social structure
Shifting Emphasis

Economic Sociology Notes


o

What is most distinctive historically between the economic structures of the
first and second half of the 20th Century is the revolution of info
...

 Therefore we should shift our focus from post-industrialism to
informationalism
 Societies as informational
 Organise production systems around principles of maximising
knowledge based productivity via development/diffusion of IT
 Second criterion of post-industrial theory concerns shift to services and
demise of manufacturing
 Services = largest contribution to GNP in advanced economies
 BUT doesn’t mean manufacturing disappearing
o Many services depend on their direct linkages to
manufacturing- manufacturing activity therefore critical to
the productivity and competitiveness of the economy
o Ref
...
e
...
g
...
7%
to 22
...
6%
Information Employment
o All countries – trend towards higher % of info processing
employment
 Not distinctive feature of US as more service
economy than info economy

Has there been an increase in precarious work in Europe in recent decades?
Are these jobs inherently low quality?
Critically discuss the widespread assertion that work has become increasingly
precarious in modern societies

Sample Answer

“Never before have working people, irrespective of their talents and educational
achievements been as… vulnerable… working in individualised situations without countervailing
collective powers” (Beck, 2000)
...
There is a perception that for many workers, the
future of their job is insecure and uncertain
...
In this essay I examine
the transformation of employment since the 1970s
...
Finally, I attempt to determine
whether the increase in precarious work is a bad thing or whether it has benefits for both
employers and employees
...
Beck states that the Fordist Regime which
emerged in the mid-20th Century rested upon the fact that the principle of mass standardisation
applies to both production and consumption
...
This standardisation became the key to the efficient functioning of society
...

However, the security and certainty of the First Modernity soon disappeared
...
In order to increase competitiveness, it
was believed that States must increase labour market flexibility
...
These features culminated in
what Beck described as the “Risk Regime”
...

According to the New York Times (1996), the notion of life time employment has become
outdated
...
The idea of a labour market where workers complete the

Economic Sociology Notes
same routinized tasks for the same number of hours per day, five days per week is a thing of the
past
...
These features of the Risk Regime led to the emergence of a
“Global Precariat” (Castells, 1996)
...
While Doogan (2009) argues that Beck’s analysis of precarious
work is more of a vision than a model based on data and statistics, there is some evidence to
support Beck’s examination of the dimensions of the Risk Regime
...
First, I will examine the impact of digitalisation on employment
...
Beck (2000) argues that global digitalisation and networking are
aimed at an economy that will have the capacity to operate as unit in real time right across the
globe
...
For many workers, this has led to less stability of hours and increased uncertainty from
day to day
...
Today, it is
argued that the world operates in one, single, global economy
...
Again, this makes employees’ work more precarious as they are expected to be
available to work at any time from any place
...
Workers can work in isolation whilst at the same time, be connected
to numerous others
...
In many cases, work schedules vary according to the
order situation and demand for workers
...
The schedules of workers in Opel
Russelsheim vary considerably from week to week
...
When the number of orders for cars increases, working times
increase for employees
...
Therefore the working week has almost no core hours
...
A similar situation occurred in Volkswagen
...
Suddenly, there was 15000 workers too many in the firm
...
Employees did 20% less work for 15% less pay
...

In the 2014 New York Times article “Working Anything but 9 to 5”, the author examines
the impact of the rise in precarious work as a result of digitalisation in today’s Global Economy
...
Janette worked
fluctuating hours in Starbucks in order to survive
...

She rarely knew her schedule in advance meaning she couldn’t plan a child minder on a regular
basis
...
However, Janette’s work schedule became so inconvenient and disruptive that
her aunt asked her to leave so Janette and her son mostly stayed on the couches of old work
colleagues of friends’ houses
...
Despite the disruption to her life, Janette feared that if she
asked for more stable hours she would simply be given less hours (NY Times, 2014)
...
Sophisticated workplace technology such as that used by Starbucks in Janette’s case,
is inhibiting people from leading normal, structured lives
...
This may lead
to increased efficiency for these companies, but it creates turmoil in workers’ lives
...
Beck (2000) examines the increase in precarious jobs in academia
...
However, the decisive break through in Hoeller’s career
failed to come
...
Now in his
fifties, Hoeller suspects his dream of obtaining a chair in a university will never be fulfilled
...
By increasing the number of
contract or part time lecturers they hire each year, colleges save in several ways at once
...
The sizeable pensions
and health contributions of regular professors do not apply to temporary employees
...
A common theme
appears to be emerging for many workers
...

The increase in precarious work in recent decades has in many ways facilitated the entry
of certain groups in society into the workforce, groups who many not have been able to commit
to set working hours before
...
Here, seasonal migrant farmworkers come from the poorest East
European countries such as Bulgaria, Romania as Northern European farmers hire them for the
summer to work on their farms
...

Female labour force participation can also be facilitated by the increase in flexible work
arrangements
...
In 2011, female workers accounted for the majority of those in
temporary work in Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands (Eurostat, 2012)
...
In the last two decades, there has been an increase in the number of young people
completing secondary education and higher education
...
Therefore students increasingly need to combine
work and study
...

In today’s globalised economy, work has become increasingly precarious
...
This precarious work has had both advantages and

Economic Sociology Notes
disadvantages for workers in the labour market today
...
Many employees are no longer confined to working
the same hours, day in day out
...
However, there have also been significant downsides to
the increase in precarious work in recent decades
...
For some employees, irregular work hours and
inconvenient schedules have had a significant impact on their personal lives and their careers
...




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