Short Abstract:

To fully understand low-quality jobs, the Capability Approach calls for an emphasis on the freedoms of workers: the range of valued beings and doings they can achieve, both inside and outside the labour market (their Capability Sets). Using new data, I develop categorisations of the UK labour force using proxies for workers’ Capability Sets, shedding new light on their choices and constraints.

Long Abstract:

[I would like this paper to be considered for the Kuklys Prize]

The Capability Approach (CA) makes a crucial distinction between “achieved wellbeing”, which it defines as the achievement of valued beings and doings (Functionings), and “wellbeing freedom”, which as the range of combinations of achievable Functionings an individual has. This distinction has been described as “virtually absent from the [wider] wellbeing literature” (Robeyns, 2017, p. 119) and is therefore one of the key contributions of the CA. It has long been understood, since Sen’s earliest writings, that these freedoms can play a critical role in individuals’ “exchange entitlement” (Sen, 1983), and are thus critical to building human resilience in times of crisis. In the study of job quality, it is argued that this calls for measures not just of workers’ Functioning achievement from their current jobs, but their range of achievable Functionings other than their present work activity (Stephens, 2023a). Put another way, it forces us to ask about the choices and constraints faced by those in different forms of work: are they engaging in this work in a context where they have other opportunities, or do they act in the context of severely constrained choices? Considering these questions has the potential to uncover important new inequalities in the experience of work within and between societies.

This question of worker choice has become increasingly relevant to public policymaking and the wider social sciences. It has proven especially important in debates over precarious and insecure work in the context of the rapid growth of non-standard forms of employment in the Global North, and the continued predominance of such jobs in the Global South. To some policymakers in the UK, for example, the decision on whether to ban or regulate the application of novel technologies to work hinges on the freedoms and choices of workers accessing such jobs. A Government-commissioned report into UK job quality defended platform labour in terms of its ability to “present individuals with greater freedom over when to work, and what jobs to accept or decline, than most other business models” (Taylor, 2017, p. 37). Industry groups, in turn, have sought to defend this work by pointing to evidence that such workers’ subjective job satisfaction is high, and that workers’ self-reported reasons for accessing these jobs suggest they have a range of other work opportunities (CIPD, 2017).

Across the social sciences, similar calls to worker choice have been made to for example challenge characterisations of self-employed workers as more advantaged (Smeaton, 2003); critique the ‘Flexicurity’ agenda (Lehwess-Litzmann, 2012); and investigate the deeper structures inhibiting the wellbeing of gig economy workers (Wood et al., 2019). Feminist literature has also long emphasised the role of constrained choices in determining gender inequalities – highlighting for example the “part-time paradox” women face in being unable to simultaneously build a career and have a family (Epstein, 1999); the consequent constraints on their agency and, thus, Capabilities (Hobson, 2014); and the narrow range of sectors women in the labour force are constrained to working in (Charles and Grusky, 2004). Capability-based critiques of Active Labour Market Policy have also called for the development of policies which enhance the range of choices (both in paid work and otherwise) available to unemployed workers (Beck, 2018; Egdell and Beck, 2020; Gousia et al., 2021; Greer, 2016).

However, to date, it has been difficult to come to a definitive judgment about the freedoms of workers in low-quality jobs because the lack of a shared conceptualisation of how these freedoms should feature in the assessment of their work-related wellbeing. For example: how should freedoms be measured? What relative weight should be assigned to these different measures? How should they be considered alongside the quality of their current jobs? The conclusions one may draw hinge heavily on the answer to these questions. A focus on subjective wellbeing, for example, would likely lead to a more generous assessment of the freedoms of those in many jobs often considered “low-quality”, in light of the high job satisfaction for example part-time workers (Booth and Van Ours, 2008), cleaners (Léné, 2019), and women (Clark, 1997). The contribution of the CA to this debate has also been stunted because of continued debates amongst CA scholars over the complexities associated with measuring the freedom aspects of capabilities, given the inherent “counterfactual nature” of the Capability Set (Comim, 2008, p. 173). Literature on multidimensional job quality has also tended to emphasise the quality of current jobs, and has been limited in its wider applications due to the lack of more detailed survey data.

In this paper, I argue the CA provides the basis of a unifying framework to measure the freedoms of workers, due to its emphasis on wellbeing freedom. In line with other scholars engaged in the CA (Felstead et al., 2019; Green, 2007; Sehnbruch, 2004), I reject subjective wellbeing-based approaches to measuring worker freedoms, providing new evidence of adaptive preferences for workers in low-quality jobs. I apply a CA-based measure of worker freedoms using an existing UK Quality of Work (QoW) index (Stephens, 2023b), and with data from a large-scale UK household survey (Understanding Society), covering the period 2010-2022.

In the absence of a direct measures of capabilities, this paper measures the Capability Set multi-dimensionally using several proxies for worker freedoms, informed by a review of how existing literature has attempted to measure these freedoms. This includes data on workers’ household circumstances, assets, skills, human capital, social class, and work trajectories. A distinction is made between the freedom workers have to engage in other paid work, versus their freedom to achieve all other states of wellbeing other than paid work. Workers are then categorised into different potential groups based on these dimensions using a mix of normative and data-driven categorisation techniques.

The paper then investigates the range of choices available to workers in l0w-quality jobs, determined by their scores in the QoW index. The difference in the extent of these freedoms is then analysed both over time; and between sub-groups such as gender and ethnicity.