Jobbannonser över tid : en diskursanalys av den ideala medarbetaren

Sammanfattning

In the past 40 years, the labour market has undergone changes as a result of the globalization and technological development in society. This also affects the way job ads are formulated and what expectations are associated with the ideal employee. The aim with this study is to compare job ads from 1980 to 2020 using Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The purpose is to analyze the language and establish how the ideal employee has been articulated through the years. Questions asked are which characteristics have been requested and how has the job ads developed over time, as well as how has the ideal employee been articulated as a subject in job ads between 1980-2020. The previous research on this subject focuses mostly on gendered language in job ads and how this affects aspects such as includement, bias and stereotypes on the labour market. Previous research suggests that job ads can be perceived as vague and that the ideal employee can be articulated differently across industries. The study analyzed 41 job ads from the Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” and focused exclusively on office-based occupations. The job ads were analyzed using Laclau and Mouffe’s concepts moments and elements, floating signifiers, chains of equivalence, nodal points and subject position. The result shows that the image of the ideal employee has changed over time. Earlier job ads contained more concrete demands that had a visible connection to specific work tasks. More recent job ads place increasing demands on applicants, expecting a combination of education, work-life experience and personal traits. The study discovered that many job ads through the years use vague descriptions intended to appear concrete, but these risk being misinterpreted. The perception of the ideal employee is continuously shaped by the dominating language trends within the current discourse.