Abstract

This study, commissioned by the International Labour Office (ILO), examines the growth and regulation of non-standard employment in three East Asian countries – the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China), Japan, and the Republic of Korea (hereafter Korea).1 A common feature amongst these three major economies is the deregulation of the labour market and the dramatic growth of the use of non-standard employment in the form of, for example, part-time work, temporary work, labour dispatch via employment agencies, and subcontract work (e.g. Coe et al., 2011; Kim and Park, 2006; Kuroki, 2012; Meng, 2012). And the globalizing economy of the three countries adds further dynamics to the restructuring of their labour market since the 1980s, including the employment of foreign migrant labour(for Japan and Korea) and rural migrant labour en mass (for China).

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Overview of the labour market of China, Japan and Korea

3. Role of key institutional actors in the labour market

4. The nature and extent of non-standard employment in China, Japan and Korea

5. Regulatory frameworks for non-standard employment

6. Regulatory responses to non-standard employment

7. The impact of non-standard employment

8. Conclusions