Work and health situation of employees in low-skilled work

Project number: F 2518 Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) Status: Ongoing Project Planned end: 2024-03-31

Description:

In many - especially essential - sectors, there is a large number of activities that do not require formal vocational qualifications or can be learned quickly. Against the background of digitalisation, "low-skilled work" has once again become increasingly important in the scientific and political dialogue. The question now being discussed is how the increasing penetration of technologies in the labour market will change low-skilled work or even the number of employees with tasks requiring no or only little qualification.

So far, low-skilled work has been defined very differently in research (no vocational qualification, quick to learn, low-income earners, unskilled/semiskilled occupations etc.). Irrespective of the different definitions, adverse constellations of working conditions for low-skilled workers with effects on their work and health situation can be assumed. The BAuA research project "Work and health situation of employees in low-skilled work" examines who works in low-skilled work, at which stages in employment history low-skilled work is particularly important, which (constellations of) working conditions are evident and which health complaints occur more frequently among low-skilled workers. The aim of the project is to identify starting points for improving the working situation of low-skilled workers, which has also come under special attention in the debate on digitisation. For this purpose, in addition to an extensive literature search, descriptive and multivariate secondary analyses with various cross-sectional and longitudinal data are conducted. The results can provide information on measuring low-skilled work in future surveys and the work and health situation of low-skilled workers.