Background: Dual labour market theory raises questions about the relationship between non-standard employment and job quality. While scattered empirical evidence exists, there is a paucity of systematic evidence on the relationship between workers' employment status and job quality.
Objective: The authors investigated the relation between workers' employment status (e.g., open-ended, long- and short-term fixed contracts, economically dependent and independent solo self-employment, and self-employment with employees) and important dimensions of job quality (JQ) (e.g., employment prospects, physical work environment, skills and discretion, and working times quality). Cross-national variation in that relation and causes of that variation (e.g., country-level unemployment rate and labour market efficiency) were also investigated.
Methods: Hierarchical regression modelling was applied using a sample of 34,094 workers from the European Working Conditions Survey 2015.
Results: The study highlighted a negative association between fixed-term contracts and JQ. For self-employed workers (except economically dependent self-employed workers) a generally positive association was observed. In this study, also positive associations were found between labour market efficiency at the country-level and some JQ indicators. National unemployment rates were negatively associated to most JQ indicators.
Conclusion: Non-standard employment contracts exhibited poorer job quality than open-ended contracts. Stronger labour market organization centred around indicators of both flexibility and equity related to more beneficial job quality for all employment statuses, thereby promoting more labour market inclusivity.
Keywords: EU28; EWCS; Multilevel analyses; labour market efficiency; unemployment rate.