The article reveals the issues of the global character of precarization and substantiates the criteria of precarious employment taking into account its special aspects in Russian Federation. The existing variability of approaches to the definition of precarious employment and the necessity to elaborate its optimal criteria in view of features of national labour have conditioned the relevance of the research. The paper involves international and Russian research on precarity and significantly uses the results of expert survey conducted by the authors in autumn 2016. The experts have considered groups of criteria based on: labour contract term, nature of labour relations, precarious terms of work. The experts also were asked to evaluate different forms of employment in which precarity may exert. As a result of the conducted research, we have elaborated the generalized criteria, which identify various forms of instability in labour market. The authors put forward a hypothesis that the criteria of the International Labour Organization (ILO) need to be adapted to the Russian realities when determining unstable employment, and the phenomenon of precarious employment has to be defined from the point of view of the probabilistic nature of its various manifestations. Based on the results of the research, the authors have qualified the relevance of International Labour Organization’s (ILO) criteria in the Russian context. We also have substantiated the probable character of precarious employment and defined probability of precarity exertion in the flexible forms of employment. The set of precarious employment criteria is specified in accordance with Russian context: we have clarified and complemented them, and defined the probability of precarity exertion in different forms of employment. The main result of the research is the structure of criterial standards, which identifies precarious employment.The conceptual issues and findings of the paper can be used as a theoretical and methodological basis to identify the scale of precarious employment in Russia as well as to evaluate precarity exertion in individual workplace.

This article presents the results of the study on precarious employment, which represents a multilevel phenomenon of the instability in the socio-economic positions of workers. This phenomenon has various forms. Precarious employment can be identified both in terms of the quality and nature of employment contract, working conditions, and in terms of the standard of living of households of precarious workers, their self-perception and behaviour models in labour market and other spheres of life. The purpose of the research is to study precarious employment using sociological indicators. We characterize precarious employment of workers, in general, and also define their profiles. Depending on the type of contractual relations and the implementation of their requirements, the profiles of employees differ in the socio-demographic, age, educational and economic characteristics. As a research method, we chose a mass survey. The sampling frame is the Russian population aged from 15 to 72 years. The selection included 1002 respondents, which were quoted by sex, age, region and socio-demographic status on the labour market. During the survey, we investigated the various aspects of precarious employment including respect for the rights of employees, level of their income, prevalence of various forms of precarious employment by profession, sex-age structure. The results of the study are the demographic, socio-labour and economic characteristics of the surveyed population as well as the description of five profiles identifying the different groups of precarious workers. The results may be applied in social-labour relations regulated by contractual agreements and working conditions of employees. Restrictions are connected with the need to change the legislation and the enforcement of the current labour and civil legislation. Future research should be focused on the üreasons of the differentiation in precarious employment.