Microworking (PDF, 59 pages, 1106KB) - Forfás

FORFÁS MICROWORKING
• For part-time workers who are not in receipt of JB or JA (and are therefore not on the
Live Register) but who consider themselves to be under-employed, microwork may go
some way to closing the gap between the existing level of employment and the desired
level of employment. As for those in receipt of JB or JA, the additional benefits in
motivation and access to networks and opportunities only arise if the microwork
opportunities are superior to the current part-time work. This is a rapidly growing
group having grown by almost 40,000 from 23,000 since 2009; 55% of all underemployed
part-time workers are women and 45% were men in 2012.
• For those people who are unemployed but looking for part-time work, microworking is
potentially a means of accessing the part-time opportunities sought; Of these people
78% were women in 2012.
• For those "marginally attached" workers who would like to work full-time, have looked
for a job sometime in the past 12 months, but are currently not "actively" looking for
work and an indeterminate number of individuals not actively seeking employment in
the workforce (carers, stay at home parents etc.) microwork could offer a pathway into
the workforce if suitable opportunities became available.
• For workers on the Family Income Supplement working part-time, microwork could
provide access to supplementary hours if needed to bring them up to the threshold of
19 hours required to maintain the support.
Figure 2.10. Relative Importance of Groups for which Microwork Could Be Beneficial
Source: Derived from Quarterly National Household Survey (May 2012) with the exception of
JB and JA figures extracted from the Live Register
2.8 Summary
There is an on-going increase in the number of people across the economic spectrum engaged
in atypical work patterns.
• Since 2002, the number of people working part-time has risen by 45% from 290,000 to
over 420,000 in 2012. Part-time workers represented 20% of the workforce in 2012.
• Approximately 150,000 people worked less than 20 hours per week in 2012, up from
100,000 a decade ago.
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