Job quality by educational level: similarities and differences

• Autor(a) principal: Pires, Inês Marques
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/17916
• topic: Labour market flexibility; Job quality; Precarious jobs; Educational level; Qualidade; Emprego; Nível de ensino; Trabalho precário; Discriminação no trabalho; Portugal

The purpose of this study is to examine how job quality varies across educational level in Portugal. The analysis of job quality by educational level is quite unexplored in the literature, as it focuses mainly on wages. This study contributes to fill this gap and provide a broader analysis on several dimensions of job quality. The empirical analysis draws on 2015 EU-LFS data and an extensive descriptive analysis of job quality variables by level of education, controlling gender and age. Findings suggest that higher educational level originates positive variations on job quality, particularly on working conditions. Female and young employees have lower quality jobs as they are more often in precarious situations, and although it improves for higher educated, the variations caused by educational level is not enough to eliminate these inequalities. Higher educated employees were found to have lower job satisfaction. Overall the investment in higher education has benefits for the worker, particularly in the long term, related to higher experience of employees. Being a descriptive study, it does not allow to correlate variable or conclude regarding cause and effect, being mostly based on assumption which may introduce bias in the interpretation. In a context of labour market flexibility and growing precariousness, education is vital both for the individual and for the society, and therefore this study attempts to raise awareness of its importance and its association to job quality.