Numbers holding low-paid, insecure jobs soar

The number of people in insecure, temporary, low-paid work has “skyrocketed” over the last 10 years, a trade union economic think-tank has found.

The Nevin Economic Research Institute carried out an analysis of, what it described as “precarious work in the elementary professions”. It found that the share of temporary contracts in the elementary professions — those which require the lowest skill level of all the occupational groups and are therefore among the least well-paid jobs in an economy — is almost double the rate for the economy as a whole.

Report author Ciarán Nugent said more than four out of five temporary workers in elementary occupations would rather have an open-ended contract: “Moreover, the share of part-time workers has increased from about 17% to about 22% and the share of involuntary part-time workers within this larger group is twice as big as it was before the financial crisis (51% compared to 24%).”