Edvin Syk försvarar sin avhandling
Disputation
Datum: fredag 4 april 2025
Tid: 10.00 – 12.00
Plats: Hörsal 5, hus B, Universitetsvägen 10 B
Edvin Syk, doktorand i sociologi vid Institutet för social forskning (SOFI), försvarar sin avhandling "Quantifying (ine)quality: Job quality over half a century in Sweden and Europe"
Anvhandligens titel: "Quantifying (ine)quality: Job quality over half a century in Sweden and Europe"
Tid: Fredag 4 april 2025, kl. 10.00
Plats: Hörsal 5, hus B, Universitetsvägen 10 B
Abstract
Job quality, or working conditions related to individual well-being, plays a crucial role in shaping various social outcomes, including individuals' life chances, organizational effectiveness, and the overall functioning of society. Despite its importance, our understanding of how its levels and inequalities have developed over time remains limited. In this dissertation, I examine the long-term development of various dimensions of job quality in the context of secular labor market trends such as skill upgrading and service sector expansion. The aim is to describe how job quality has evolved, how its levels have changed, and how it is distributed across gender, class, cohort, and educational levels. The first two studies use longitudinal data from Sweden, The Level of Living Survey, while the final study uses the European Working Conditions Survey.
Study I considers how job quality-measured using job complexity, physical work environment, negative stress, and flexibility-has developed in Sweden between 1968 and 2010. The results indicate that job quality has improved across all dimensions except for negative stress, which has consistently increased for both genders. Overall, job quality has risen, and general inequality has decreased. The gender gap observed in earlier years had vanished by 2010. Most of the increase in job quality for women can be explained by changes in the job distribution (having different jobs) over time, while the opposite is true for men.
Study II introduces career trajectories of job quality using the same measures as Study I. The job quality trajectories are compared with wage and prestige trajectories to assess their difference. Results show that, each successive cohort improved their average job quality for the full career. A large and persistent educational gap in job quality remained throughout the career, and career mobility made inequalities for men larger. A small gender gap in quality emerged over the career. Disparities in job quality have far-reaching consequences for well-being throughout the working life but have not grown over time. The evolution has been positive, with rising average levels, without a corresponding rise in inequality.
Study III examines the development of four job quality dimensions—physical work environment, autonomy, work intensity, and work time quality—across eight occupational classes in 15 European countries from 1995 to 2015. Using data from the European Working Conditions Survey, the study assesses how these dimensions have changed over time and how their variation is structured both within and between occupational classes and countries, compared to income. The analysis reveals class gradients in physical environment and autonomy, while showing minimal variation by year and country. Regional patterns of inequality emerge clearly, with Nordic countries and the Netherlands demonstrating lower between-class and within-class inequality compared to Southern European nations. Lower-skilled occupational classes consistently exhibit greater variation in working conditions across all dimensions, highlighting the importance of class for understanding job quality inequality. The findings demonstrate that class is more important than country and over-time changes for understanding inequality in job quality. I also emphasize, however, that we need to broaden our explanations beyond these factors to better understand the full scope of inequality in working conditions.
Keywords
Job quality, Working Conditions, Social stratification, Inequality, Gender, Class, Swedish Level of Living Survey (LNU).
Senast uppdaterad: 5 mars 2025
Sidansvarig: MD