On average, a person from an OECD country spends 37 hours a week at work, and an increasingly larger share of their adult lives in paid-work. Therefore, work is strongly related to the quality of individuals’ lives and their well-being. Moreover, quality jobs are an important driver of increased labour force participation, productivity and economic performance. The OECD has developed a framework to measure and assess the quality of jobs that considers three objective and measurable dimensions. Together, they provide a comprehensive assessment of job quality.

• Earnings quality captures the extent to which earnings contribute to workers' well-being in terms of average earnings and their distribution across the workforce. 

• Labour market security captures those aspects of economic security related to the risks of job loss and its economic cost for workers. It is defined by the risks of unemployment and benefits received in case of unemployment. 

• Quality of the working environment captures non-economic aspects of jobs including the nature and content of the work performed, working-time arrangements and workplace relationships. These are measured as incidence of job strain characterised as high job demands with low job resources. 

Note: data refer to 2012 for France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland; 2011 for Israel and 2010 for Estonia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia and Turkey. Generalized means approach is used as an aggregation tool to compute earnings quality measures, assuming a high inequality aversion.
Source: OECD Job Quality database (2016)

Note: data for Chile refer to 2011 instead of 2013.
Source: OECD Job Quality database (2016)

Note: data on Turkey are based on results of the 2005 European Working Conditions Surveys (EWCS).
Source: OECD Job Quality database (2016) based on the 6th European Working Conditions Survey for 2015 and International Social Survey Program Work Orientations Module III for 2005.