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Abstract
Based on an analysis of the New Zealand data in the Work Orientation module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) across three rounds (1997, 2005 and 2015), this paper examines how workers in New Zealand perceive their job quality. These surveys imply that New Zealanders have relatively good jobs, as shown in healthy levels of job quality and job satisfaction. They rate highly the quality of their collegial relationships at work and typically perceive the intrinsic quality of their job as better than the extrinsic quality. A key issue in relation to the latter is that they generally do not rate their advancement opportunities as high. While men, full-timers and graduates have some advantages over women, part-timers and non-graduates in extrinsic job quality, the intrinsic quality of work is more evenly experienced. In terms of intrinsic issues, the rising level of stress from 2005 to 2015 poses a concern and there is no evidence that graduates enjoy any kind of premium in the intrinsic quality of work apart from a lower level of hard physical effort.
Keywords: Job quality, job satisfaction, gender, employment status, education, New Zealand
Introduction
Jobs vary significantly in their quality across the world, including in the more developed economies. As Bryson et al. (2016) comment, the generation of poor quality jobs in Western industrialised nations despite economic growth has encouraged policy makers in Europe and elsewhere to focus their attention on job quality (p.179). Similarly, Holtgrewe et al. (2015), writing in Europe, observe that jobs with low wages, low autonomy, physical and psychological strains, limited perspectives and insecure employment do not simply persist, but are newly created (p.1).
Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the perceptions of New Zealand employees of their job quality over the last 20 or so years. It is important to evaluate job quality on a country-specific basis because comparative studies show that there are major variations across countries in the quality of work (e.g. Esser & Olsen, 2011; Holman, 2013) and, wherever possible, it is important to track changes in each country over time (Adamson & Roper, 2019). As Volk and Hadler (2018) comment, future research should thus consider both individual-level influences within countries and changes over time (p. 122). Our...