The number of Britons reporting they are employed on ‘zero-hours’ contracts which offer no guaranteed work or pay has risen by almost a fifth over the past year, official figures showed on Wednesday.
Zero-hours contracts are popular with employers in the hospitality, social care and further education sectors, but the opposition Labour Party had pledged to restrict their use before losing a national election in May.
The Office for National Statistics said it estimated 744,000 people, equivalent to 2.4 per cent of Britain’s workforce, were employed on zero-hours contracts in the second quarter of 2014, compared with 624,000 a year earlier.
Some of the increase might be due to more people being aware that they were on zero-hours contracts, the ONS said.
Separate ONS research conducted in January, which looked at the number of zero-hours contracts, rather than the number of people employed on them, showed that the number of jobs offered on zero-hours terms had held broadly steady at 1.5 million.
Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at Insecure ‘zero-hours’ jobs on the rise in Britain – The Globe and Mail
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