The polarisation of employment has been one of the consensuses observed in recent years within the economy, especially in the English-speaking world. Authors who defend this thesis argue that in recent decades, jobs have grown at both extremes: those that are highly skilled, firstly, and those that are very low skilled, on the other. This means, therefore, that intermediate jobs decline. The theory of polarisation of employment in salary terms has been confirmed by different authors in both the United States (Autor and Dorn, 2013) and in the United Kingdom (Goos and Manning, 2007). 

In continental Europe, however, more recent analyses do not permit confirmation of this theory. Rather to the contrary, the data reflect how, on the old continent, jobs in high-quality occupations grew much more and jobs in the worst quality occupations declined (Oesch and Piccitto, 2019). In other words, more than any polarisation of employment, in Europe in recent decades an occupational improvement has taken place.

Analysed specifically are the changes that took place between 1992 and 2015 in four European countries, each of them representative of the different institutional systems and welfare regimes present in Europe, identified in the specialised literature (Esping-Andersen, 1999): Germany, exponent of the continental regime; Spain, representative of the Mediterranean model; Sweden as a Nordic social-democratic country and the United Kingdom, representative of the liberal Anglo-Saxon model. “Good” or “bad” jobs are defined with four alternative indicators of employment quality: salaries, education, prestige and job satisfaction.

The results show, in short, that the occupational improvement is clear in all the countries analysed when education, prestige or job satisfaction are taken into account. Furthermore, this is confirmed with all the indicators in Germany, Spain and Sweden. The case of the United Kingdom is somewhat special, because if we look solely at salary-based occupational change, then there are signs of polarisation.

Observing the change in the five occupations that have grown most and those that have declined most in recent decades gives an initial idea of the occupational change in this period. Immediately obvious in figure 1 is how, in general terms, the occupations that have grown most are those that are good or intermediate and those that have declined most are manual jobs or elementary occupations, which we can consider as “disadvantaged” jobs from several angles. 

Specifically, the group that encompasses the managers of administrative and commercial departments is one of those that has most grown proportionately in Spain, from 7% of the total in 1992 to more than 10% in the year 2015. This growth, furthermore, occurred in all four countries analysed. In contrast, the jobs that have declined most are those with a lower level of skills such as factory operators and assemblers (whose weight in the workforce has been reduced to half), or salespeople (whose weight in the workforce has fallen 4 percentage points). 

Employment in the European countries analysed grew more in occupations in which the quality of work is high and declined in those of worse quality. To confirm this, the occupations were ordered, firstly, from worst to best in each of the four indicators considered, and then they were grouped into five blocks of equal size (quintiles). Thus, in the classification of salaries, in the first quintile are 20% of jobs in occupations that in the 1990s had the lowest salaries; in the second group are the following 20% and so on successively until the fifth group, which includes the 20% of occupations with the highest salaries.

Whatever the indicator used – salaries, education, prestige or job satisfaction – in the European countries considered, employment in occupations of higher quality grew by some 10 percentage points from the start of the 1990s, when they represented approximately 20% of all employment, to reach 30% in 2015. In other words, the predominant tendency has been not labour polarisation but occupational improvement. Or in other words: the occupations that are mainly declining are not the intermediate ones, but mainly those of low quality.

Occupational change in Spain has been even more spectacular. In barely 25 years, employment in higher-quality occupations has almost doubled, growing by 15 percentage points when considering salaries, education level or prestige (figure 2). Although the pattern is repeated, the change is much less marked when job satisfaction is analysed. This is especially understandable if we take into account the fact that Spain is one of the European countries with the lowest levels of job satisfaction, even among those workers in well-paid occupations or with high occupational prestige.

In summary, the European economies continue to be more successful in the automation and delocalisation of occupations that are poorly paid, low-skilled and of a low category, such as farm workers and plant operators, data entry officers and sales assistants. In parallel, the expansion of employment was more vigorous in the best-remunerated posts and those better skilled in management, and the same thing also happened with the academic professions. 

Clearly, the unfavourable scenario of polarisation does not reflect the structural tendencies of employment in Western Europe. Given the magnitude of the expansion of education in recent decades, this is good news. As colleges and universities have trained more workers with a high level of education – and the cohorts of less skilled people retire – the economy has also created more employment in occupations that require a higher level of education.

The case of the United Kingdom is somewhat peculiar and far removed from the pattern of the other countries. In the UK not only did employment in occupations with better salaries (quintile 5) grow, but also in those with the worst salaries (quintile 1). We could say, therefore, that there has been a certain polarisation of employment, although this is not maintained when occupational change is analysed in relation to education, prestige or job satisfaction. The explanation of this apparent paradox has a lot to do with the strong growth of caregiving occupations, which are among the worst paid, but have a medium education level, prestige and job satisfaction. 

A “good job” is often associated with a “well paid” job. However, the quality of employment is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that it is hard to reduce exclusively to salaries. For that reason, here a broader focus is adopted incorporating four employment quality indicators:

1. Median occupational income.
2. Education level.
3. Occupational prestige.
4. The job satisfaction of workers. 

The analysis of the changes in the occupational structure is based fundamentally on the European Active Population Survey from 1992 to 2015, to which is added information originating from other sources. Specifically, information is incorporated on job satisfaction among workers themselves originating from the European Social Survey and on salaries based on the European Survey on Salary Structure.

This is also a much more comprehensive analysis that that of other research studies, since it considers the entire labour force, including farm workers, migrants, self-employed people and public servants.

AUTOR, D. H. e DORN, D. (2013). “The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the US labor market”, American Economic Review, 103(5).

ESPING-ANDERSEN, G. (1999). Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford University Press.

GOOS, M. e MANNING, A. (2007). “Lousy and lovely jobs: the rising polarization of work in Britain”, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(1).

OESCH, D. e PICCITTO, G. (2019). “The polarization myth: occupational upgrading in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the UK, 1992-2015”, Work and Occupations, 46(4).