Analysis of Convergence / Divergence in Europe: Job quality and working conditions trends

The European policy agenda on job quality has both stimulated and been shaped by research on job quality that has greatly improved our understanding of the nature and level of job quality in Europe and provided a better understanding of the institutional and organisational factors that shape job quality and how the level of job quality is associated with employee characteristics such as gender, age and skill levels. Despite these advances in our understanding of job quality in Europe, there remain a number of challenges. One challenge relates to the mapping of trends in job quality over the last twenty years and gaining a more detailed breakdown of how trends vary by country and within countries. There is clearly a need for a more detailed analysis of trends in job quality up to 2010 that includes the EU-15 and the New Member States, and that breaks down the trends by country and other key variables relevant to the EU policy agenda such as gender, age, education. This is important to gain a better understanding of where, and amongst whom, job quality has improved or declined.