Assessing the performance of a novel Finnish register-based measure of precarious employment: affected employee groups and subjective and objective employment outcomes

As an important driver of inequality in the labor market, it is crucial to develop measures to assess precarious employment. Most previous measures have been survey-based. We used register data on wage-earners aged 20–64 residing in Finland in 2013 (N = 1 873 210) to develop a novel measure of precarious employment, including items on job discontinuity, multijob holding, agency employment, underemployment, and employment income. We assessed the performance of the measure by examining the distribution of precarious employment by sociodemographic factors and occupation as well as exploring its associations with subjective (job insecurity with survey information from the same year 2013 linked to the register data at an occupational-group-level) and objective (unemployment over a 5-year follow-up) employment outcomes using linear regression. In the total study population, approximately 5% had precarious employment. It was more prevalent among women, younger age groups, individuals with a foreign background, those with lower education, manual workers, and private sector employees. Large-size occupations with more than 10% of precariously employed individuals included teachers’ aides, waiters, food service counter attendants, car, taxi and van drivers, security guards, kitchen helpers, and cooks. Precarious employment was not consistently associated with subjective job insecurity. It was nevertheless associated with objective occurrence and duration of unemployment. Precarious employment, as captured by the novel Finnish register-based measure, has similar background factors as recognized in previous literature and identifies occupations expected to be characterized by precarious employment. Those classified as precariously employed based on objective characteristics of their employment relationships do not necessarily perceive their job as insecure, although they have a clearly increased risk of subsequent unemployment. The measure can be considered to perform well for use in further studies applying Finnish register data.