A Bermuda triangle of policy? ‘Bad jobs’, skills policy and incentives to learn at the bottom end of the labour market

Abstract

A focus of Government policy has been the need to ensure that those at the lower end of the labour market invest in their human capital through re-engaging with learning, which has been assumed to enable progress into better-paid employment. This article explores the problems created by 'bad jobs' and the evidence for the existence of a set of mutually reinforcing factors that reduces the incentives acting on individuals in such work, and in many cases their employers, to participate and invest in education and training. Each of these factors, on their own, would be sufficient to cause problems at the lower end of the labour market. Acting in concert, as a mutually reinforcing matrix, they produce powerful reasons why many individuals perceive that the incentives to engage in workrelated learning are weak. More broadly, our argument suggests that the fundamental causes of low pay and low-quality employment have been misdiagnosed and the subsequent public policy solution of up-skilling interventions is relatively ill-fitted to achieving the desired policy goals. Imaginative re-thinking on how policy might help those in low-wage, dead-end jobs is necessary.

Shades of grey: Understanding job quality in emerging graduate occupations

“…Crucially, we propose that inferior job quality is the vehicle through which underemployment (in emerging occupations) leads to negative attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment, career satisfaction) and lower psychological well-being. This argument has already been suggested in the context of a shift of policy focus from upskilling the workforce to upskilling jobs and organizations (Buchanan and Wales, 2006;Keep and James, 2011). Keep and Mayhew (2010) argue that much of the relationship between skills and overall productivity is explained by the practices through which organizations manage their workforce skills.…”

Creative Contexts: work placement subjectivities for the creative industries

“…Capturing and sharing these different expectations is something that Creative Contexts has attempted with limited success through the 'Employers' section of the website. There have been a greater numbers of student contributions to Creative Contexts, however, and this allows for exploration of the subjective dimensions of employability in terms of student aspirations, motivations and, as Keep and James (2012) describe, incentives. Keep and James (2012, 216) employ a typology of incentives that includes the pull of opportunities, 'both to learn and to then utilise that learning, either for personal pleasure (intrinsic reward), to benefit others (altruistic reward), or for tangible gain through some form of paid employment' and the push of 'resources, expectations and social relationships, which enable and sustain learning'.…”

La proliferación de las pasantías y el reto de reglamentar en favor de una experiencia laboral decente

“…La proliferación de las pasantías debe entenderse también en el contexto de un cambio de enfoque con respecto al desarrollo de las competencias. La presión que reciben las empresas para ofrecer resultados a los accionistas, unida a la falta de predictibilidad de los mercados globales, no favorece la inversión a largo plazo en formación (véase, por ejemplo, Hall, 2011;Keep y James, 2012). En consecuencia, las actividades formativas desarrolladas en la empresa, que antes eran parte consustancial de los puestos de trabajo para principiantes, han disminuido de tal manera que ese costo recae ahora sobre el trabajador.…”