A Quality of Employment Index for the tourism sector in developing countries
the case of Uruguay
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7784/rbtur.v16.2622Keywords:
tourism, employment, quality of employment, Multi-dimensional index, Principal component analysisAbstract
Although job quality has become an active field of study over the last two decades in developed countries, it still remains an under discussed concept in developing regions such as Latin America, where the incidence of work informality and low wages are particularly high. As quality of employment is a multidimensional concept and not homogeneously defined in the literature, we follow a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to build a Quality of Employment (QoE) Index for salary earners using household survey micro data of Uruguay from 2016-2019. Uruguay leads the Better Jobs Index launched by the Inter American Development Bank in 2017, which constitutes the only index with a macro-approach to measure quantity and quality employment conditions in the region. We consider several aspects of working conditions: employment, earnings, hours worked, occupational safety and social security coverage. We focus on the tourism sector, which presents low job quality characteristics at the same time it accounts for 7.2% of employment in Uruguay. Furthermore, we found a sex-based gap of employment quality against women in tourism, a difference that is not observed in the trade sector. QoE in tourism shows a greater dispersion in the distribution of employees, indicating the presence of more inequalities among these workers compared to those of trade. Other results show that job quality in tourism is lower for those unskilled, but that there are still many skilled workers facing low quality. Finally, if we consider the activities that conform tourism, workers do better in hotels and travel agencies rather than in restaurants and entertainment.
Downloads
References
Altmark, S. & Larruina, K. (2011). Cuantificación y caracterización general del empleo turístico en Uruguay: Econo-mía y management del turismo y los eventos. Quantum: revista de administración, contabilidad y economía, 6(1), p. 80-94.
Amarante, V., Arim, R. & Dean, A. (2012). Protecting workers against unemployment in Uruguay. Research Depart-ment Publications 4731, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
Blanco, O. & Julián, D. (2019). Una tipología de precariedad laboral para Chile: la precariedad como fenómeno transclasista. Revista CEPAL. https://doi.org/10.18356/8f5ac9c8-es
Brida, J. G., Lanzilotta, B., Lionetti, S., & Risso, W. A. (2010). Research note: The tourism led growth hypothesis for Uruguay. Tourism Economics, 16(3), p. 765-771. https://doi.org/10.5367/000000010792278356
Brida, J. G., Lanzilotta, B., & Risso, W. A. (2008). Turismo y crecimiento económico: el caso de Uruguay. PASOS Revista de turismo y patrimonio cultural, 6(3), p. 481-492. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.pa-sos.2008.06.036
Burchell, B. Sehnbruch, K., Piasna, A. & Agloni, N. (2014). The quality of employment and decent work: definitions, methodologies, and ongoing debates. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 38(2), p. 459–477. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bet067
Campos-Soria, J. A., Marchante-Mera, A., & Ropero-García, M. A. (2011). Patterns of occupational segregation by gender in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(1), p. 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2010.07.001
Cazes, S., Hijzen, A. & Saint-Martin, A. (2015). Measuring and Assessing Job Quality: The OECD Job Quality Frame-work. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, 174, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5jrp02kjw1mr-en
Costa, C., Carvalho, I., & Breda, Z. (2011). Gender inequalities in tourism employment: The Portuguese case. Revista Turismo & Desenvolvimento, (15), p. 39-54.
De Oliveira, O. (2006). Jóvenes y precariedad laboral en México. Papeles de población, 12(49), p. 37-73.
Dueñas, D., Iglesias, C., & Llorente, R. (2010). Job quality, job satisfaction and services in Spain. Journal of Innova-tion Economics Management, (1), p. 145-166. https://doi.org/10.3917/jie.005.0145
Espinola, N. (2016). Segregación ocupacional por género y diferencial de ingresos en turismo: Evidencia para Ar-gentina. Económica, 62, Enero-Diciembre.
Farné, S. (2003). Estudio sobre la calidad del empleo en Colombia. OIT.
Favieri, F. N. (2018). Precariedad laboral multidimensional: algunos métodos multivariados de abordaje. Precarie-dades del trabajo en América Latina, ed. Dasten, J. V., Santiago: RIL editores.
Fernández Massi, M. (2014). Dimensiones de la precariedad laboral: un mapa de las características del empleo sectorial en la Argentina. Cuadernos de Economía, 33(62). https://doi.org/10.15446/cuad.econ.v33n62.43675
García-Rodríguez, F. J., Armas-Cruz, Y., & González-de-la-Rosa, M. (2021). Decent work in hospitality: scale develop-ment and validation. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29(10), p. 1674-1693. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1865386
Green, F. & Mostafa, T. (2012). Quality of Work and Employment. European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Dublin.
González, P., Sehnbruch, K., Apablaza, M., Méndez Pineda, R. & Arriagada, V. (2021). A Multidimensional Approach to Measuring Quality of Employment (QoE) Deprivation in Six Central American Countries. Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, 158(1), p. 107-141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-021-02648-0
Huneeus, F., Landerretche, O., Puentes, E. & Selman, J. (2015). A multidimensional employment quality index for Brazil, 2002-11. International Labour Review, 154. p. 195-226. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00239.x
ILO (1999). Report of the Director General: Decent Work. International Labour Conference, 87th session, Geneva. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1564-913X.2015.00239.x
ILO (2016). Non-standard employment around the world: Understanding challenges, shaping prospects. Interna-tional Labour Office, Geneva.
Inter-American Development Bank (2017). Better Jobs Index: An employment conditions index for Latin America. https://publications.iadb.org/en/better-jobs-index-employment-conditions-index-latin-america
Kaiser, H. F. (1974). An index of factorial simplicity. Psychometrika, 39, p. 31–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02291575
Kolenikov, S. & Angeles, G. (2004). The use of discrete data in PCA: theory, simulations, and applications to socio-economic indices. Measure Evaluation October 20th.
Hoque, K., Earls, J., Conway, N., & Bacon, N. (2017). Union representation, collective voice and job quality: An anal-ysis of a survey of union members in the UK finance sector. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 38(1), p. 27-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143831X14555707
Leatherman, J. C., & Marcouiller, D. W. (1996). Estimating tourism’s share of local income from secondary data sources. Review of Regional Studies, 26(3), p. 317-339. https://doi.org/10.52324/001c.8964
Marcouiller, D. W., & Xia, X. (2008). Distribution of income from tourism-sensitive employment. Tourism Economics, 14(3), p. 545-565. https://doi.org/10.5367/000000008785633622
Mendoza-González, M. Á., Cruz-Calderón, S. F., & Valdivia-López, M. (2020). Niveles y subniveles de precariedad extrema en México: una metodología de grupos con condiciones laborales ordenadas. Estudios demográ-ficos y urbanos, 35(2), p. 405-448. https://doi.org/10.24201/edu.v35i2.1784
Ministerio de Turismo de Uruguay (2020). Anuario 2019. https://www.gub.uy/ministerio-turismo/politicas-y-ges-tion/anuarios-estadisticos
Ministerio de Turismo de Uruguay (2020). https://www.gub.uy/ministerio-turismo/datos-y-estadisticas/estadisti-cas/empleo
Nardo, M., Saisana, M., Saltelli, A., Tarantola, S., Hoffman, A., & Giovannini, E. (2005). Handbook on Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology and User Guide, OECD Statistics Working Papers 2005/3, OECD Pub-lishing.
Orellana Bravo, M. R., Rivera Bautista, C. J., Beltrán Romero, P. A., & Ontaneda Jiménez, D. D. (2020). Midiendo la calidad del empleo: una aplicación para Ecuador en el periodo de 2007 a 2017. Revista de Economía del Caribe, (25), p. 7-33. https://doi.org/10.14482/ecoca.25.331
Pineda, J. A. & Acosta, C. E. (2011). Qualidade do trabalho: aproximações teóricas e estimação de um índice com-posto. Ensayos sobre Política Económica, 29(65). https://doi.org/10.32468/Espe.6502
Porto, N., & Espinola, N. (2019). Labor income inequalities and tourism development in Argentina: A regional ap-proach. Tourism Economics, 25(8), p. 1265–1285. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354816619828143
Porto, N., Espinola, N. & Carella, L. (2020). Income inequality, tourism and resources endowment in Uruguay: a spatial and distributional approach. Asociación Argentina de Economía Política: Working Papers 4393, Aso-ciación Argentina de Economía Política.
Sinclair, M. T. (1998). Tourism and economic development: A survey. Journal of Development Studies, 34(5). pp. 1-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220389808422535
Stacey, J. (2015). Supporting Quality Jobs in Tourism. OECD Tourism Papers, 2015/02, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5js4rv0g7szr-en
Sehnbruch, K., González, P., Apablaza, M., Méndez, R., & Arriagada, V. (2020). The Quality of Employment (QoE) in nine Latin American countries: A multidimensional perspective. World Development, 127, p. 104738. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104738
Santero-Sanchez, R., Segovia-Pérez, M., Castro-Nuñez, B., Figueroa-Domecq, C., & Talón-Ballestero, P. (2015). Gen-der differences in the hospitality industry: A job quality index. Tourism Management, 51, p. 234-246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2015.05.025
Tornarolli, L., Battistón, D., Gasparini, L. & Gluzmann, P. (2014). Exploring Trends in Labor Informality in Latin Amer-ica, 1990-2010. CEDLAS, Working Papers 0159, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
Trendafilov, N. T. (2013). From simple structure to sparse components: a review. Computational Statistics, 29(3-4), p. 431–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00180-013-0434-5
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2015). Handbook on measuring quality of employment A statis-tical framework. United Nations New York and Geneva. https://unece.org/DAM/stats/publica-tions/2015/ECE_CES_40.pdf
Winchenbach, A., Hanna, P. & Miller, G. (2019). Rethinking decent work: the value of dignity in tourism employment. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(7), p. 1026-1043.
Wilson, T. D. (2008). Introduction: The Impacts of Tourism in Latin America. Latin American Perspectives, 35(3), p. 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2019.1566346
World Tourism Organization (2019). The Future of Work and Skills Development in Tourism – Policy Paper, UNWTO, Madrid.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Malena Dolcet, Natalia Porto , Carolina Inés Garcia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
