Evidence from leximetric analysis, in the form of the 2023 update to the CBR Labour Regulation Index, is used to chart the trajectory of laws relating to the standard employment relationship (SER). There is evidence of attempts to shore up the SER, for example by seeking to normalise and regulate part-time, fixed-term and temporary agency work. While flexibility has been introduced into working time norms, the idea of a regular working day and week remains a focal point for regulation. These approaches, beginning in Europe in the 1980s and embodied in EU directives from the late 1990s, have been widely diffused around the world and can be seen in legal reforms across Latin America, in southern Africa and in East Asia. How far the strategy of defending the SER is a feasible one in the light of continuing pressures towards precarity and the fissuring of work, and how it interacts with inequality trends, are at present uncertain, but it can be expected to have significant implications for the future of labour law as a mode of regulation.