Precarious Work in China 2010s-2020s: Types, Distribution and Causes

Existing studies have shown a global trend toward rising levels of labor insecurity, trapping a growing number of populations in precarious works in both the Global North and the Global South. The debate on precarious work reflects a universal concern on the future of work despite differences in cultures, political regimes or economic systems. However, few studies have been done in discussing the precarious work in China. Precarious work is relatively rare in China before the 1980s, as the informal economy has been mostly wiped out in 1950s, the majority of the labor were employed in state or collective enterprises, guaranteed with a life-long full-time job. During the transition from central planned economy to market economy, despite China’s great success in economic development, the past decades also saw rising social inequalities and growing tensions in labor relations. Which is also reflected by the growing prevalence of precarious work across all sectors of the economy. To comprehend the overall state of precarious work in China, this study first proposes a multi-dimensional measurement on job quality to identify the precarious work in the Chinese labor market based on an intuitive and tangible taxonomy on working population. Based on which, we further analyze the prevalence of precarious employment in China since 2010, as well as populations who are vulnerable to the precarious jobs. Moreover, beyond the individual scope, a macro-level analysis is further performed to reveal the institutional and structural forces underlying the prevalence of precarious works in China during the past decade.