Quality of Employment in Bogotá (Colombia): Concept, Method and Evidence

Abstract

The concept of quality of employment is a helpful response to different conceptualisations and typologies’ failures in the analysis of the diversity of labour institutions in Latin America. The authors with the help of an original methodology combining socio-economic dimensions in a Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), construct a multidimensional indicator. Analysing individual data coming from a household survey in Bogotá for 2013, they found a clear polarization in the quality of employment distribution, transcending the classical typologies. Finally, this original and contextualized measure seems to be useful to describe precisely the complexity of the labour market institutions.

Keywords:

• Colombia
• labour market institutions
• multiple correspondence analysis
• quality of employment
• univariate clustering

Data Availability

Additional results and copies of the computer programs used to generate the results presented in the paper are available from the lead author at: [email protected]

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors whose names are listed immediately below certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript.

This statement is signed by all the authors to indicate agreement that the above information is true and correct.

Thibaud DEGUILHEM

Michelle VERNOT LOPEZ

Baptiste DELMAS

Notes

1 The definition of informal economy kept in this article leans on the characterization established by the ILO in 2003, regrouping two pillars: informal sector and informal employment. The informal sector is defined as small enterprises having less than five employees, unregistered or not holding a written account. Informal employment is defined as work without a contract or unprotected work, which can be located in the informal or in the formal sector (Hussmanns, 2004).

2 See e.g. Asselin (2009, pp. 19–77).

3 If the first factor obtains the major part of the adjusted MCA eigenvalues (Greenacre, 1993).

4 To create the most appropriate score possible on a quantitative variable, the optimization technique to implement is fairly complex and has long been debated in the literature. However, in various disciplines, it appears that the method of Fisher remains an appropriate response to this problem because of its efficiency and speed of calculation compared to other possible methods.

5 The population increased by 87% since 1985.

6 In Colombia, the labor inspection faces strong institutional weaknesses and the number of labor inspectors has stagnated at around 1,000 individuals (Ministerio del Trabajo, 2014).

7 The 2008 Gini index came from Bogotá’s Department of District Planning (SDP, 2013). Authors have calculated the 2013 Gini index with the 2013 household’s survey.

8 It is interesting to note that our measurement of QoE appears to be significantly correlated with income and job satisfaction, which would tend to go in the direction of the studies adopting a one-dimensional vision by taking one of these two criteria to approximate the job quality. However, we note that these relationships remain weak from a statistical point of view with regard to the corresponding linear correlation coefficients (r = 0.20 for hourly income and r = 0.15 for job satisfaction), suggesting de facto that this multidimensional approach is not reducible neither to income nor to satisfaction. In addition, the MCA reveals other important variables among the 13 used in the construction of the multidimensional indicator: pension, collective protection, hours and place of work in particular. In other words, although these two variables are indeed necessary to understand this quality, they are also insufficient and require the addition of other types of criteria in order to understand the complexity of the forms of employment (Floro & Messier, 2011; Huneeus et al., 2015; Sehnbruch et al., 2020).

9 The Cajas de Compensación Familiar are private not for profit entities that provide economic redistribution through subsidies and services (health, education, sports, culture, tourism, housing, loans, etc.). All employers must register membership for all permanent employees or workers engaged in work activity for more than four hours a day or more than 93 hours monthly.

10 We consider that a stable job is obtained when the labor contract is superior to one year. In fact, the Colombian labor law indicates that contracts over a year must be permanent.

11 Mean differences between low and high job quality group by each socio-economic variable are significant.

12 We used the OLS regression to test the relationship between age and our QoE index.

13 We used the OLS regression to test the relationship between years of education and our QoE index.