By David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) - Some 1.4 million British jobs offer no guarantee of a minimum amount of work, the state statistics agency said on Wednesday, after its first survey of employers about so-called 'zero-hours' contracts.
The figures suggested the contracts are more common than previously thought.
More than one in eight employers used zero-hours contracts or similar agreements, rising to almost half in tourism and catering, the Office for National Statistics said.
Britain's opposition Labour party called on Friday for tighter controls on zero-hours contracts, which have become more widespread in recent years, particularly in sectors such as retail, catering and care of the elderly.
The ONS said that people with zero-hour contracts were disproportionately students, female and under 25 or over 65.
"These patterns may partly reflect the groups most likely to find the flexibility of 'zero-hours contracts' an advantage," the ONS said.
However, the contracts offer no guarantee of a minimum amount of work or pay each month, even though they can require workers to be available at short notice, bar them from employment elsewhere and allow shifts to be cancelled without compensation.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said on Friday that if he wins the national election in May next year, he wanted to limit such practices in a bid to improve Britons' standard of living.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Britain's main human resources body, estimated last year that employers used around 1 million zero-hours contracts.
The ONS previously had estimated that 583,000 people were employed on zero-hours contracts in 2013, up from 143,000 in 2008 and equivalent to just under 2 percent of the work force.
The agency said those findings were not comparable with the estimate published on Wednesday, which was based on a survey that had not been carried out before.
More research was needed, the ONS said. In addition to the 1.4 million contracts that did not guarantee a minimum number of hours, another 1.3 million contracts led to no work being performed.
Some of these contracts might include people who no longer worked regularly for a company, but others probably should be added to the 1.4 million total for contracts without guaranteed minimum hours, the ONS said.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Larry King)