We underestimate the importance of job quality for our lives

Professor Green’s report analyses the gender gap in job quality along six dimensions: 

• Working time quality, including work hours and scheduling flexibility 
• Weekly earnings  
• Job security  
• Autonomy and skill, including influence over workflow 
• Physical environment, and 
• Work intensity

The report analyses findings from the 2024 Skills and Employment Survey (SES2024), the eighth in a series of nationally representative surveys that explores the experiences of workers in Britain – led by Cardiff University, with UCL, Nuffield College, Oxford and the University of Surrey. 

Through a series of in-person interviews, adults aged 20-65 working in Britain were invited to reflect on the six chosen dimensions of job quality. 

The report also takes into consideration data from previous Skills and Employment Surveys since 1986. 

The gender pay gap is consistently monitored in official government statistics. Hence, the report seeks to understand the gendered differences in other factors impacting job quality. Moving forward, the report aims to inform employers and policymakers’ efforts to foster gender equality at work. 

The report found that the quality of working time was higher for women. Fewer women reported working for more than 48 hours a week. However, men were more likely to be able to determine their own start and end times at work. 

Over time, the gender gap in working time quality has narrowed, with an improvement for both genders, particularly post-pandemic, as both men and women became more able to control when they begin and finish the workday. 

The gender gap is slowly beginning to narrow in weekly earnings. Women’s earnings rose substantially after 2012, and by 2024 had increased 19% compared to 2006 levels. 

A small gender gap exists in job security, slightly in favour of women. Yet, trends in job security are similar for both men and women, which sees a long-term improvement in job security, though this fell in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 recession. 

Men, however, experience greater job quality in autonomy and skill. The gender gap in this dimension narrowed rapidly from 2001 to 2012, to the extent that there was no significant gap in 2017. 

However, the gender gap opened again in 2024. Thirty percent of men interviewed in the SES2024 reported that they have quite a lot or a great deal of say in decisions around the way they work, compared to only 25% of women. 

Trends in job autonomy and skill have also been moving in opposite directions. Since the 1990s, the required level of job skill has been rising. The proportion of jobs requiring degree-level qualification or above rose from 29% in 2001 to 46% in 2024, rising especially fast for women between 2001 and 2012, and after 2017 for both sexes. 

In contrast, job autonomy has been falling since 2001 for both genders: 46% in 2001 to 39% in 2024. 

Looking at the physical environment of work, there has been a substantial improvement over the century, influenced by the development of industrial structure, safety procedures, regulatory controls and technologies. 

This is particularly true for men: the proportion of men that reported health and safety risks at work declined from 38% in 2001 to 21% in 2024. Women in previous years have historically been at lower physical risk; hence, women saw only a small improvement in physical environment since 1992. 

Taking this into account, there has been a complete gender convergence, and men now perceive themselves to be at the same level of physical health risk from work as women. 

In terms of work intensity, there is a near-zero gender gap with no significant difference between men and women. More generally, it increased from 1992 to 2017, but fell from 2017 to 2024, reflecting the impact of pandemic lockdown. 

The report also looked at the social environment of work, though data on this dimension was only collected from the SES2024. There was a significant gender gap in favour of men, driven by a gender gap in exposure to workplace abuse, which women are disproportionately more likely to experience. 

However, women are more likely to report moderately higher levels of managerial support than men. 

The report calls for improved and regular monitoring of all objective dimensions of job quality to understand trends in inequality according to gender and other protected characteristics. This would develop a deeper understanding of Britain’s economy and chart the nation’s progress towards gender equality. 

Job quality is a significant contributor to wellbeing and health and determines employees’ commitment to the job. Hence, the report also calls for employers to improve their management style and human resource policies to improve job quality for both sexes. 

Professor Green says, “Each of these dimensions of job quality have been shown through scientific research to be strongly related to all measures of wellbeing and health. The Office for National Statistics should be collecting statistics on these dimensions to better understand trends in job quality. 

“We underestimate the importance of job quality for our lives – having a good job makes an enormous difference to our wellbeing in many different ways.”

Related links

• Read about the 2024 Skills and Employment Survey (SES)
• Professor Francis Green’s UCL profile
• Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES)
• Department of Education, Practice and Society

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bernardbodo via Adobe Stock.