The Evolution and Demise of the Postwar Concept of Job Quality: an Analysis of Theories of Employment Segmentation

This article traces the evolution and demise of the postwar model of job quality. This model evolved in the context of theories of sheltered employment. It tied assumptions about job quality to the idea that the economy was separable into a stable and unstable segment. Jobs were typically described in terms of a dual structure, in which workers were either employed in the core sector with high employment security and high relative wages or the periphery, where jobs were low paying and unstable. Industrial jobs in large scale mass manufacturing enterprises, in this context, served as a benchmark for individual job quality. When the assumption of a stable sector of the economy became untenable, the concept of labour market shelters was modified and new models which accounted for flexibility in production were developed. This modification process progressively eroded the core of labour market segmentation theory. By the 1990s, both conceptual considerations and empirical evidence dismissed older simplistic concepts of stable demand, and suspended key assumptions about the cumulative nature of job quality. In terms of a Sociology of Knowledge, we witness the gestation and deterioration of an integrated set of economic propositions paralleling real and/or perceived changes in the economic environment.