The notion of labour precariousness is central in the popular, political, and scientific discourse as a condition increasingly used to characterize a relevant part of the employment available in current European economies and societies. Initially, it was considered as a stepping-stone for young people at the entry of the labour market, something that could be surpassed within a few years of experience. Today, reinforced with the COVID-19 pandemic and respective consequences in the economy and labour market, together with the platformization (Casilli and Posada 2019) and development of the gig economy (MacDonald and Giazitzoglu 2019), precariousness affects an increasingly significant proportion of the manpower independently of age, skills or educational attainment with already noteworthy but still under-researched effects in youth transitions, labour relations and income and social inequalities throughout societies. Despite its wide use in sociology and other social sciences, the concept of precariousness still raises several theoretical hurdles and operational difficulties, associated with the diversity of perspectives, analytical dimensions and methodological endeavours used to analyse the phenomenon. These circumstances have led research in the social sciences to invest especially in qualitative methodologies operations to address this issue, however quantitative and extensive efforts are also needed for obtaining a wider notion of the extension and features of the phenomenon. This presentation will discuss some of these theoretical and methodological difficulties in the use of the concept of precariousness, together with a proposal for its systematic operationalisation using the (Portuguese) Labour Force Survey micro-data.

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