{"id":5924,"date":"2015-02-26T14:53:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T14:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/?p=5924"},"modified":"2021-01-13T10:41:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:41:46","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-zero-hours-the-number-that-keeps-getting-bigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glass-cage.com\/dianas_blog\/2015\/02\/26\/the-guardian-view-on-zero-hours-the-number-that-keeps-getting-bigger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on zero-hours: the number that keeps getting bigger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well for me \u00a0in my particular circumstances I can see that some zero hours contracts might work. \u00a0However for most folk they are not a good thing \u00a0and should not be used to replace more secure working arrangements.<\/p>\n

\"PoweredThis article titled “The Guardian view on zero-hours: the number that keeps getting bigger” was written by Editorial, for The Guardian on Wednesday 25th February 2015 20.07 UTC<\/a><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not be sour. The bounceback in jobs during the current recovery has been staggering \u2013 exceeding all predictions. During the depths of the slump too, although things were dreadful, the UK shed far fewer posts than any of the macroeconomic models suggested. Whereas in the past there had been something close to a one-for-one proportional relation between lost jobs and lost output, for every three percentage points of GDP that disappeared after 2008, only 1% of jobs went up in smoke.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s not be blinkered either. If there is reason to be cheerful in the quantity of jobs in a famously flexible labour market, there is reason to be fearful when it comes to the quality. Underemployment, perma-temping and the recasting of low-grade staffers as \u201cself-employed\u201d hires shorn of all rights were striking features of working life in the recession, and all trends that have been stubbornly slow to reverse in the recovery. That much is reaffirmed every month when the official labour market statistics appear. Nothing, however, sums up the pall of insecurity that has befallen so much of the workforce like zero-hours contracts. We can\u2019t map the numbers over long years in this case, because \u2013 until recently \u2013 the arrangement was still so exotic that no proper figures were collated. Slowly but surely, however, the information gap is being filled and, in every new droplet of data, zero emerges as the number that keeps getting bigger.<\/p>\n

At the dawn of the slump it was estimated that there were fewer than 200,000 \u201cjobs\u201d without guaranteed hours<\/a>. Since then much has changed<\/a> \u2013 the term \u201czero hours\u201d has gained currency, definitions have changed, and new data sources have been tapped to tally up the individual workers affected, recognising that some will rely on multiple jobs. But through all the refinements and seasonal blips that might colour the figures, there has been only one trend. The Office for National Statistics reported<\/a> on Wednesday that there were 1.8m zero-hour contracts, and 697,000 zero-hours workers, both numbers that have been climbing fast.<\/p>\n