Workload and Wage Gain As Determinant Indicators of Constructing a Composite Index Reflecting Worker Well-Being: Evidence from Taiwan Record-Linkage Data of Manpower Surveys

In light of tremendous institutional changes in the labor markets and working conditions, the research devotes to establish some labor indicators in the hope of reflecting labor transitions and enhancing international comparisons. Although existing official statistics help shed lights on recent development trend, they are not capable of providing us with dynamics and evolution of a complex labor market system temporally and spatially at individual level. Based on 900 thousand individual laborers collected from the 1980-2010 micro data sets of Taiwan Manpower Utilization Surveys (MUSs), the research uses record linkage technique to link individual records of MUSs, creating the so-called quasi-longitudinal MUS (QLMUS). QLMUS is not only large in data size, but also rich in labor information, including demographic characteristics, human capital, work status, employment dynamics, and individual wage income. On the basis of the constructed QLMUS, the research aims to study the evolution of labor well-being in the past three decades. With other factors being fixed, the study constructs an indicator of labor well-being (ILWB) on the basis of joint distribution of individual wage income and workload. ILWB is measured by the joint integral with respect to individual wage income and individual workload, which can not only reflect the collective well-being of labor by social class, region, labor market institution, but also enable us to explore the joint effect of labor market flexibility and security, or flexisecurity, and to reflect various conditions of labor market, worker’s life, labor’s value and labor market inequality. Research findings serve as the base for the design and provision of evidence-based labor market policy.