Northern Ireland
Insecure at work
Key points
- In terms of feeling satisfied with their job, there is a marked difference between part-time and temporary employees.
- The vast majority of part-time employees do not want a full-time job. By contrast, only a third of temporary employees do not want a permanent job. This suggests that, whereas part-time employment is generally a positive choice, temporary employment is often not.
- Over the last decade, the number of people on temporary contracts has remained fairly steady, at between 30,000 and 40,000 people.
- Only a small minority of low paid workers (those earnings £7 an hour or less) belong to a trade union (one in fifth). By contrast, half of all workers earning £7 to £20 an hour or more belong to a trade union.
Graph 1: Temporary/part-time
View Graph as PDF Right click to save large version of Graph as PNG
Graph 2: Temporary contracts
View Graph as PDF Right click to save large version of Graph as PNG
Graph 3: Union membership
View Graph as PDF Right click to save large version of Graph as PNG
Definitions and data sources
The first graph shows the principal reasons that people give for taking part-time work or temporary work. In each case, the main point of interest is those taking these forms of work who would prefer, respectively, full-time or permanent work.
The second graph shows the number of people on temporary contracts. A temporary employee is one who said that his/her main job is non-permanent in one of the following ways: fixed period contracts; agency temping; casual work; seasonal work; and other temporary work.
The third graph shows the proportion of people currently employed who are members of a trade union or staff association, with the data shown separately by level of pay.
The data source for all the graphs is the Labour Force Survey (LFS). In the first two graphs, the data is the average for the latest three years. The figures in the third graph are for the fourth quarter of the 2007 Labour Force Survey (the data is only collected in the fourth quarter).
Overall adequacy of the indicator: high. The LFS is a large, a well-established, quarterly government survey of designed to be representative of the population as a whole.