3. Working hours and balancing work and non-working life (a) Working hours

1. 3. Working hours and balancing work and non-working life(a) Working hours Measuring the Quality of Employment 11th-13th September 2013, Geneva Dr.Hanna Sutela Senior researcher Population and Living Conditions/Statistics Finland Hanna.sutela@stat.fi

2. “50. The number of hours worked and their scheduling is another important aspect of the quality of employment. Excessively long or involuntary short hours of work may have a significant impact on human well-being. The same applies to the percentage of employed persons working in more than one job.”Statistical framework for measuring quality of employment. Draft revised after the meeting on 22-23 November 2012. Hanna Sutela

3. 3a Working hours • 3a1 Mean weekly hours usually worked per employed person • 3a2 Percentage of employed persons usually working 49 hours or more per week • 3a3 Percentage of employed persons working few hours per week involuntarily (involuntary part-time) • 3a4 Employment by weekly hours usually worked (quintiles) • 3a5 Percentage of employed persons working more than one job Hanna Sutela

4. Points raised in the Geneva 2011 meeting: • Important to distinguish full-time and part-time workers • Average working hours problematic • Refer to usual rather than actual hours • „Involuntary“ part-time needs harmonisation Hanna Sutela

5. Major changes agreed by Expert Group in November 2012 • One proposed indicator removed • One new indicator considered, but rejected • The major change: actual hours => usual hours Hanna Sutela

6. Hanna Sutela

7. Hours actually worked Hours usually worked Based on international standards Key indicator for social analysis Typical value of hours over a long reference period Relevance higher in countries with predominantly regular working hours Measurement isssues: determining ”typical” hours by respondentOriginal slide byThomas Körner & Katharina Puch, Wiesbaden 2012 • Based on international standards • Key indicator for National Accounts (volume of labour, productivity) • Situation in the reference week (public holidays, annual and family leaves, strikes, seasonal variation) • Measurement issues: memory bias, deduction of time absent from work Hanna Sutela

8. Aggregated working hours are strongly influenced by: • the self-employment rate (self-employed typically working longer hours than employees) • the part-time rate • the female employment rate (women typically working shorter hours than men) • the share of multiple-job-holders (working hours typically measured only as hours in the main job) • the structure of economic activity (e.g. those working in the agriculture having typically long working times) Hanna Sutela

9. Recommended disaggregations • Status in employment according to the ICSE-93 (particularly self-employed workers vs. employees) • Sex and age • Full-time vs. part-time workers • Economic activity (ISIC/NACE) • Countries with a significant share of employed persons holding more than one job should additionally refer to the working time in all jobs held by each employed person, if possible in case of usual hours. Hanna Sutela

10. Interpretation guidelines:In general • Long working hours: perceived differently by individuals in different employment situations and in different countries • “Involuntary” and “voluntary” part-time employment : Eg. Preference and need for a full-time job but impossible due to care responsibilities => “voluntary” part-timer? • To work more than in one job : low income, lack of full-time job high status., demand for one’s skills (eg. Medical doctors, consultation work) Hanna Sutela

11. Interpretation guidelines:In relation to other indicators and context indicators • Weekly usual hours sensitive to the business cycle => analyse the indicator together with context indicators e.g. employment rate • Mean working time might decrease during recessions, while employment in long working hours might increase (as layoffs increase the workload of the remaining workers). • The indicators of this sub-dimension should be analysed together with indicators of the Dimension 2 (Income and benefits from employment). • The length of mean hours worked per employed seems to correlate with the GDP (OECD 2010), shorter working hours typically found in countries well off Hanna Sutela

12. To bediscussed:3a4 Employment by weekly hours usuallyworked (quintiles) • The value of hours usually worked that divide the population of employed persons into five equally numerous subsets • Cut-off point of each quintile • Aims to provide more descriptive and detailed information on the variation of the length of working weeks than the mean usual working hours; reflects heterogeneity/homogeneity of the length of working week among certain groups or within certain context Hanna Sutela

13. Especially in countries with relatively homogeneous working hours (low share of part-time employment, low share of overlong working hours), working hours tend to cluster around the mean value • Deciles? • Median and quarters? • Median, 10p and 90p? Hanna Sutela

14. Distribution of HWUSUAL in selected countries, LFS 2010 Calculations by Jean Ries Hanna Sutela