Report
Work
How flexible hiring could improve business performance and living standards
This study investigates the number of ‘quality’ flexible job vacancies in the UK, and shows how living standards could improve if there were more of these jobs.
New part-time or flexible job vacancies are necessary to enable workless people in low-income households to enter the jobs market on a flexible basis, and for people in low-paid part-time work to progress to new jobs with better pay while retaining their flexibility.
The report shows that:
- parents, older people and disabled people need to earn at least £10.63 per hour to meet basic minimum income standards – the target pay threshold for a ‘quality’ job;
- 1.9 million people could benefit from a quality flexible job and have the necessary qualifications, of whom 202,300 are in poverty;
- demand for flexible jobs (47 per cent across all salary levels) is far in excess of supply (6.2 per cent of all quality vacancies).
Gender pay divide
75% of part-time workers are women.
Part-time workers are paid less than full-time workers with equivalent qualifications:
- Highly qualified (e.g. diploma/degree) part-time workers are paid £3.51 less.
- Part-time workers with intermediate qualifications (e.g. A levels) are paid £2.64 less.
- Part-time workers doing a trade apprenticeship are paid £3.42 less.
Sources: Annual Survey of Hours and Earning 2015, How flexible hiring could improve business performance and living standards
Downloads
timewise-flexible-hiring-summary.pdf
(161 KB)
timewise-flexible-hiring-full.pdf
(1.47 MB)
This report is part of the work topic.
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