Skill-based inequality in job quality: a multilevel framework

This study focuses on skill-based inequality in job quality and the role of social institutions in structuring the relation of skills to job attributes. Four measures of job quality are examined: job security, job achievement, job content and flexibility, and their variation across workers with different level of skills and across countries. The study is based on the 2005 ISSP module on work orientations and encompasses 27 countries. Obtained through multilevel modeling, the findings show that low-skilled workers are disadvantaged in all aspects of job quality. However, skill inequality in the quality of employment depends on countries’ characteristics, with declining skill-based inequality in countries at higher levels of technological development and widening skill disparities in times of technological growth and when unemployment is high.