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Job quality has become a prominent issue in recent years ‐ and with good reason, say Francis Green, Alan Felstead and Duncan Gallie. Their findings on inequality and job quality and how they have changed illuminate the true state of Britain's labour market, and make clear the need for changes in policy to improve working lives.

This article examines the impact of the 2008–9 recession on training activity in the UK. In international terms, the UK is assumed to have a deregulated training market which is sensitive to changing economic conditions. However, national datasets and qualitative interviews suggest that, despite the severity of the recession, employers cut training expenditures by a small amount and the impact on training participation rates was minimal. Contrary to the starting assumption of a deregulated training market, the article shows that employers in the UK do not have a completely free hand and that a combination of market intervention and business requirements obliged most of them to sustain training despite the recession. These constraints included: compliance with legal requirements, meeting operational needs and satisfying customer demands. However, the recession prompted many employers to find ways of maintaining training coverage to meet these obligations, or as several respondents put it, 'train smarter'.

The value that employees attach to the intrinsic aspects of work is important for whether or not job quality issues should have a central place on the social agenda. This article examines whether the importance that British employees attach to intrinsic job quality changed between 1992 and 2006. It uses two nationally representative surveys of employees. It finds no evidence to support the view that there has been a shift towards instrumental job preferences. On the contrary, it shows that intrinsic job preferences rose over the period. The growth in importance of intrinsic orientations is associated with rising levels of education and parental encouragement in education, the improvement of people's jobs with respect to skill, learning opportunities and employee involvement and higher incomes and security.

AbstractTraining decisions are affected by beliefs about the returns to training, surrounding which firms face considerable uncertainty. We model the consequent association between training, profitability and establishment survival. We propose a plausible definition of optimism about training effectiveness, and show that more optimistic firms train more. We then present estimates of the relationship between training and the likelihood of medium‐term commercial survival. We find that increased training of non‐manual workers in large establishments is associated with a greater chance of survival; however, disaggregation reveals that the association differs across occupational groups. In smaller establishments, increased training for Craft and Technical workers is associated with better chances of survival, while for Professional workers the opposite effect is found.

Task discretion has held a central place in theories of work organization and the employment relationship. However, there have been sharply differing views about both the factors that determine it and the principal trends over time. Using evidence from three national surveys, this article shows that there has been a decline in task discretion since the early 1990s. This contrasts with an increase in other forms of employee involvement such as direct participation and consultative involvement. Many of the arguments in the literature about the factors that favour higher task discretion are supported by our evidence - in particular those emphasizing the importance of skill levels and the broader organizational ethos with respect to employee involvement. However, such factors do not account for the decline in task discretion, implying that existing theories fail to address some of the crucial determinants. It is tentatively suggested that it may be necessary also to take account of macro factors such as competitive pressure, public sector reform programmes and the growth of accountability structures.

RéSUMé. — En s'appuyant sur les résultats d'une série d'enquêtes nationales conduites auprès de la population active britannique, l'article apporte une contribution aux débats récurrents portant sur les liens entre changements technologiques, autonomie dans le travail et qualification. Sur la période concernée, il met à jour une élévation notoire des niveaux de qualification ; il ne confirme pas un accroissement de leur polarisation. Par contre, il constate un déclin de l'autonomie dans le travail pour toutes les catégories de salariés et, en particuliers, pour les « professionnels » (éducation, santé.), le personnel travaillant dans la vente et les services rendus aux particuliers ainsi que ceux occupant les emplois les moins qualifiés. Les nouvelles technologies sont étroitement associées à une élévation des niveaux de qualification ; elles n'ont que peu d'influence sur l'autonomie dans le travail.