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Cambridge Journal of Economics Advance Access originally published online on October 27, 2007
Cambridge Journal of Economics 2007 31(6):941-971; doi:10.1093/cje/bem028
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

Job quality and the economics of New Labour: a critical appraisal using subjective survey data

Andrew Brown, Andy Charlwood, Chris Forde and David Spencer*

* Leeds University Business School (Brown, Forde and Spencer) and Warwick Business School (Charlwood)

Address for correspondence: Andrew Brown, Leeds University Business School, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK; email: andrew{at}lubs.leeds.ac.uk

This paper assesses the record on job quality during the early term of office of the New Labour government by interpreting, from a political economy perspective, changes in a variety of subjective measures of job quality taken from several different data sources. We find some improvements in job quality over the period 1998–2004; however we argue that these improvements have arisen not because of New Labour's policies towards the workplace but because of low and falling rates of unemployment. Despite recent improvements, a large number of workers in Britain remain in low quality jobs and, without a radical change of policy direction, sustained and substantial progress in the quality of work will remain elusive.

Key Words: Economics of happiness • Job quality • New Labour • Political economy

JEL classifications: B50, I31, J8, J28

Manuscript received November 6, 2006; final version received August 15, 2007.


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