After a decade of austerity, Europe’s economy has bounced back. Unemployment in the EU is at its lowest rate since records began. However, the last ten years have also been a period of stagnant wage growth and painful labour market adjustment. One of the most striking features of the post-crisis years has been the growth of things like zero-hour contracts, the so-called “gig economy”, and fixed-term employment contracts; for most people, the “job for life” has been replaced by a succession of “jobs for a year or two”.

Meanwhile, freelancing has flourished, with companies arguing their workers are actually self-employed (and therefore much easier to fire, with fewer social security costs for their employer to cover). In France, the New York Times reports that some bicycle couriers are now renting out their accounts to illegal migrants, taking up to a 50% cut of the earnings. As the NY Times puts it: “The fact that there is less money from the platforms has pushed poor people to outsource to people even poorer than them”. Is this really a healthy economy?

What do our readers think? In 2019, the EU reached its lowest unemployment rate in nearly two decades. However, Sophie sent us a comment demanding not just more jobs, but also quality jobs. She says that means “decent salaries, worker rights, protection, etc.” So, is Europe’s economic recovery being built on poor quality jobs?

To get a response, we spoke to Stefan Olsson, the Director-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission. What would he say to Sophie’s comment?

Initially, the first pick-up after the crisis in 2008 was indeed very much what we call ‘non-standard jobs’. So, the new jobs that were created when we started to come back, so to say, were often fixed-term, temporary agency jobs.

Today, we see that actually the permanent jobs – which I think are what one would qualify as ‘quality jobs’ – are picking up and this trend is being reversed. So, there is a certain truth in that the initial recovery was based on non-standard jobs, which according to Sophie’s definition would be low quality, but now this trend is reversed.

So, in terms of the issue of low quality jobs and whether Europe’s economy is dependent on them, it’s more complex but the reply we would say is: no, our economy is dependent on high quality, high skilled jobs that are adding value. That’s the type of industry and service sectors we have in Europe. So, we don’t see that we are dependent on these jobs, but rather that this was a way to get out of the crisis for many countries.

For another perspective, we also spoke to Arthur Corazza, Head Policy Research Officer for the Working Group on Youth Employment at the European Student Think Tank, and a graduate student at the London School of Economics. What would he say?

I think voices like Sophie’s for quality jobs are really important for adopting new economic thinking in Europe. Instead of focusing on job types alone, we need to pay more attention to direct quality measures, including job security, working time, work-life balance, collective representation, etc.

Now, the OECD and European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) actually show that growth and job quality can be mutually reinforcing with conducive institutions and practices. For example, that’s the case in Denmark and Sweden. However, job quality in Spain and Italy, indeed, remains rather low compared to other countries, but also employment growth is stagnant and what growth there is especially occurs in atypical jobs. So, there is actually a growing job quality divide in the EU.

Now, conceptually, this issue really hits the nail on the head. I think the policy template that has also informed austerity has posited high standards as detrimental to economic prosperity. But the weakening of collective voices has obviously been harmful to the quality of people’s jobs; if we prioritise economic strength at the cost of people’s quality of work life, we actually confuse means and ends. The alternative would be to adopt broader common objectives. Concretely, that means taking job quality seriously, with an explicit target in a post Europe 2020 strategy, and that needs to happen at the EU level.

Next up, we had a comment from Patricia arguing that, in order to guarantee quality jobs, the EU needs to make self-employment and freelance working more acceptable and better supported, especially in terms of access to social protection and worker rights. Is she right?

How would Stefan Olsson from the European Commission respond?

She is right, absolutely. And the main issue here is that in many countries there is no obligatory provisions or schemes for social protection for the self-employed. Because, traditionally, one has seen that the self-employed were strong, like dentists or doctors, who could take care of this themselves.

Now, we see that the weaker self-employed really struggle with this issue of social protection. Therefore, we presented a proposal for a recommendation – because we cannot force the Member States on this, this is really their competence – but we have presented a recommendation that Member States do provide for social protection for the self-employed, and that was adopted by Council, though it’s not a legally-binding act. But she’s completely right, it is one of the big challenges we have.

Is Europe’s economy built on poor quality jobs? Do freelance workers need better access to social protection? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!

IMAGE CREDITS: (cc) Flickr – eugenuity; PORTRAIT CREDITS: Olsson (c) European Commission, Corazza (c) European Parliament