GMB's Employment Explorer - illustrating the insecure world of work
- Neil Foster
- Jan 23, 2018
- 2 min read
GMB is leading the way in tackling insecure work.
We know insecure work is growing significantly – but not evenly and not everywhere. There’s loads of data, but it can be hard to get a sense of the real picture of how, and where, work is changing.
Working with the Open Data Institute (Leeds), GMB can now illustrate what the official statistics show by devolved nation, region, and where the statistics allow, by local authority area too.
It takes just a few clicks to see for yourself using 'hexmaps' on our Employment Explorer website. They'll give you the number of jobs as well as the percentage of the total workforce.
The four current categories on the website are people on zero hours contracts, temporary workers, agency workers and self-employed. While many self-employed workers will be genuinely self-employed, where there are big increases over a short period of time, it could suggest that there is some cynical use and abuse of self-employment by companies.
The Employment Explorer microsite also makes it possible to make comparisons between different areas. For example, in some regions the number of people on zero hours contracts continues to increase while it is falling elsewhere:
You can then click on any specific region to see the change there, over time:
And by clicking the 'Play time series' button, you can watch the changes over time animate on both the map and graph:
As well as being a resource for GMB members and regions, it will also be helpful to journalists, academics, councillors and MPs and anyone else interested in employment.
You can also take screenshots of the results or use the ‘snipping tool’ on your computer to use the hexmaps you are interested in for your presentations or reports. This website should be useful resource and will continue to be updated as the statistics allow.
In the meantime, GMB is pressing for the Office of National Statistics and the government to publish more regular statistics on insecure work and in enough detail to allow more local breakdowns.
Visit and bookmark the website here http://www.odileeds.org/projects/employment-explorer/ Please share it with others you think will find it interesting and useful.
For more information or to give any ideas or feedback, please email me!
