ABSTRACT Non‐standard contingent employment has become a hallmark of contemporary labour markets, raising widespread concerns regarding job quality and worker well‐being. Using job satisfaction as a proxy for well‐being, previous studies have generally observed lower levels of satisfaction among contingent workers relative to permanent workers. Substantial heterogeneity nevertheless exists, with self‐employed workers often reporting greater levels of satisfaction and casual and labour‐hire workers reporting lower levels of satisfaction. We revisit these findings and examine the role of job characteristics in explaining these results. Using data on a wide range of job attributes from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, we show that contingent employment differs from permanent employment on several dimensions including flexibility and autonomy, skill use and job security. These differences explain previously observed gaps in job satisfaction, suggesting that job characteristics play a crucial mediating role in the relationship between contingent employment and worker well‐being.

ABSTRACT The proponents of app‐based, algorithmically mediated employment seek to create an easily transferable uniform labour process around the world. These apps classify their workers as independent contractors coupled with the ideological pitch that they will be ‘their own boss’. This model is designed to avoid adhering to employment regulations, but it also effectively appeals to low‐wage workers with historically negative experiences in the labour market. This paper explores how the worker experience and ideological pitch of app‐based employment varies in different socio‐cultural and political contexts. Apps, we argue, may strive for uniformity but they are shaped by local conditioning. Utilising theories of the construction of the labour process, governmentality and racial platform capitalism we explore how app work is conditioned in four cities in the global north and south, demonstrating how place shapes algorithmic management and worker resistance. We point to the role of labour market informality in the south as a primary dynamic shaping divergent responses in our cases.

ABSTRACT The ability to identify minimum wage employees is essential for minimum wage research. When the minimum wage is set at an hourly rate, such as in Ireland, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom, researchers often combine monthly or weekly earnings data with self‐reported hours worked to calculate an hourly wage to determine if a worker is on minimum wage. This may lead to misclassification, whereby higher paid employees are misclassified as minimum wage employees or vice versa. An alternative, but less common, approach for identifying minimum wage employees is to use a direct survey question. Ireland is the only country in Europe whose labour force survey includes both linked administrative earnings data and a direct minimum wage question, thereby facilitating a comparison of both approaches. When studying the incidence, characteristics and outcomes associated with minimum wages, we show that the choice of approach (administrative data vs. survey question) can produce different results. We discuss the limitations of each approach when it comes to implementing difference‐in‐differences analysis to study the impacts of a minimum wage increase. We then combine useful features from both approaches to come up with a difference‐in‐differences estimate that overcomes some of the limitations that exist when using either approach on its own. We argue that the addition of a standardised minimum wage question in labour force surveys across Europe would allow researchers to provide more robust estimates on the impacts of minimum wage changes, while also facilitating cross‐country minimum wage research.

ABSTRACT This paper examines how prohibiting LGBTQ workplace discrimination through state‐level Employment Non‐Discrimination Acts (ENDAs) affects corporate investments in organization capital. Using difference‐in‐differences analysis of US public firms from 1976 to 2020, we find ENDAs adoption causes a significant and persistent increase in various measures of organization capital. The positive impact is amplified for states and firms exhibiting greater ex ante acceptance of diversity. We also document that ENDAs increase corporate cash holdings and operating flexibility, validating employee protection as an intermediary channel. Our study demonstrates that ENDAs meaningfully increased corporate organization capital over the past four decades, highlighting how equal opportunity laws can enhance knowledge‐based assets and resilience by improving human capital retention, recruitment, and motivation.