Sustainability of digital and non-digital forms of employment: comparative assessments

Modern theoretical and practical views on the impact of digitalization on welfare and quality of working life are controversial and fragmentary. The effectiveness of the application of digital social and labor relations is considered in scientific publications, as a rule, outside the context of sustainability. The aim of the work is to identify differences between digital and non-digital employment according to the criteria of sustainability in the context of standard and non-standard forms of social and labor relations. Key tasks are to develop our own methodology for assessing the sustainability of employment forms; carry out comparative and rating assessment of the sustainability of digital and non-digital forms of employment based on objective and subjective indicators. Empirical basis includes the results of a nationwide survey of able-bodied population aged 20 to 59, N = 2,896 people, quota sample. Key controlled features are sex and type of residence area (region’s administrative center, city, rural settlement). All federal districts are covered with the exception of the Southern Federal District. We reveal that, according to most indicators, digital standard and non-standard forms of employment are more stable than non-digital forms, they occupy 1st and 2nd places in the final ranking. Digital standard employment is inferior to non-digital standard employment only in terms of the ratio of labor income to subsistence minimum. According to other objective indicators, digital employment demonstrates either significantly better working conditions or comparable social effectiveness. Digital non-standard employment is significantly more sustainable than non-digital non-standard employment in terms of the ratio of labor income to subsistence minimum, probability of a normal working week and possibility of voluntary choice of afterhours. The non-digital format is more stable in terms of legitimacy of labor relations and possibility of voluntary choice of underemployment. Subjective assessments of the effectiveness of employment formats among respondents in the digital segment are higher in all indicators of sustainability, especially in terms of job satisfaction and financial situation. A promising direction for future research les in conducting expert assessments of the significance of the proposed indicators for the development of an integrated index methodology for assessing employment sustainability.