Cross-National Correspondence Analysis of Generational Differences in the Perception of Work Conditions

The paper attempts to verify the hypothesis of the existence of generational differences in the perception of the conditions and quality of work. The research issues considered in this paper are chosen following the regularities observed in the labor markets indicating that special attention should be paid to two age groups: the youngest and the oldest persons. The highest unemployment rate in the EU is observed among young people who encounter various barriers at the beginning of their professional career. On the other hand, the older group of people is expected to provide an important contribution to the labor force to face the problem of aging societies. The objective labor market indicators should be confronted with the results of the subjective opinions of the labor market participants in order to have a comprehensive outlook of the situation. The chosen multivariate method is applied to analyze the opinions of both young and older Europeans taking into consideration the spatial diversity. The opinions about current work given by European Social Survey respondents are analyzed, among others these are the variety of current work, possibilities of learning new things at work, effort-salary relation, support received from other workers etc. The paper presents some results obtained from the applications of correspondence analysis whose usefulness is determined by the measurement scales of the regarded variables.