Job quality is an important aspect of employment for individuals as well as employers. Having greater job autonomy in one’s every day working life contributes to an individual’s well-being; job autonomy, along with the ability to earn an income while learning new skills, is deemed to describe ‘good jobs’ (Geary and Wilson, 2023). At the same time, job autonomy is also recognised as one of the key areas that contributes to an attractive and engaging workplace.
In this report, we examine the extent to which workers believe they can influence how they can carry out their work tasks (i.e. level of job autonomy). The data is drawn from the ad hoc module on Job Skills in the EU Labour Force Survey (LFS) in 2022, with a particular focus on who in the labour market has a higher level of job autonomy (e.g. age, gender) and what aspects of employment/jobs promote greater control over work tasks (e.g. economic sector, occupation). We also examine the extent to which workers with different levels of job autonomy also have jobs where tasks are standardised or are repetitive in nature.
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