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Abstract: Researchers have successfully used the Goldthorpe and related NS-SEC and ESeC class schemata to explain inequalities in a range of areas of social life. While the schemata seek to distinguish between classes of employees based on their employment relations, it is argued that that these employment relations are themselves generated by employer responses to two hazards: monitoring difficult and human asset specificity. For work that is easy to monitor and requires only general skills, employers offer a labour contract of short duration with pay linked closely to measurable inputs or outputs. In contrast, to elicit the effort and commitment of those engaged in work that is harder to monitor and requires firm-specific, specialized skills, employers offer workers a service contract which is often permanent and includes benefits such as progressively rising salaries and pension contributions. However, new technologies and managerial practices are facilitating the monitoring of work and leading to the erosion specialist skill use in some occupations - while increasing it in others. These developments may have shifted the distribution of classes in relation to monitoring difficulty and human asset specificity. In addition, contradictory trends for occupations grouped in the same class may have undermined the internal consistency of classes. Nevertheless, there have been few tests of the theory that monitoring difficulty and human asset specificity generate the differences in employment relations that distinguish classes. Nor has research sought to assess whether the hypothesised relationship has changed over time. Here, four waves of the British Skills and Employment Survey are used to address these issues. While analyses (i) reproduce the expected distribution of classes, (ii) demonstrate significant stability over time and (iii) reveal interesting subclass heterogeneity, significant difficulties in constructing reliable scales mean that results remain at best suggestive. Nonetheless, one concrete finding emerging from this research is the inconsistent coding of class across survey waves. This has resulted in the miscategorization of respondents in some classes relative to the best quality derivation method (which the data permits), which may undermine some conclusions reached in existing studies. 

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Nicholas Martindale. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.