Transitions from temporary employment to permanent employment among young adults: The role of labour law and education systems

Abstract

Temporary work is common across Europe, especially among young people. Whether temporary employment is a transitory stage on the road to standard employment, and whether this varies depending on institutional contexts, is controversial. This article investigates variability in transition rates from temporary to permanent employment across Europe, and how this is related to employment protection legislation (EPL) and the vocational specificity of education systems. We utilize harmonized panel data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions, covering 18 European countries and including 34,088 temporary workers aged 18–30. The results show that stricter EPL is associated with lower rates of transitions to permanent employment, while partial deregulation, with strict EPL for permanent contracts but weaker EPL for temporary contracts, is associated with higher transition rates. Vocationally specific education systems have higher transition rates, on average. Moreover, the role of EPL is conditional on the degree of vocational specificity.

Ad hoc decisions as latent strategies: How do firms use nonstandard employment contracts?

“…This is an important finding because the way in which employers use non‐standard contracts is likely to have an influence on the careers of employees working on a non‐standard contracts, that is, whether such contracts are a stepping‐stone or a trap for the careers of individual employees (Mattijssen et al, 2022). Most previous research on the stepping‐stone and trap hypothesis has attempted to explain variation in the effects of non‐standard contracts on careers by studying macro‐level or micro‐level factors, such as employment protection legislation (Högberg et al, 2019) and educational level (de Lange et al, 2014). However, not much research has included the organisational level, even though employers may play a crucial role (Adam Cobb, 2016; Mattijssen et al, 2022), especially in increasingly deregulated labour markets.…”

Social Exclusion of Youth in Europe

“…Likewise, policies need to be evaluated not only in terms of their ability to tackle youth labour market vulnerability per se, but also regarding the role these policies play in mitigating the consequences of labour market insecurity on other dimensions of young people's lives. This book extends the limited amount of previous European comparative research in this field (see, for example, Blossfeld et al, 2005;Vossemer et al, 2018;Högberg et al, 2019aHvinden et al, 2019;Täht et al, 2020).The chapters of this book do not follow the same line of analysis for all countries, but take more of a comparative approach providing systematic in-depth insights into the different consequences of individual-level labour market insecurities in Europe for the risks of social exclusion of youth. Starting from a shared multilevel theoretical model, the book approaches this research topic empirically from a multimethod and European comparative perspective.…”

“…In a comparative qualitative study of six European countries, Kieselbach et al (2001) provided in-depth insights into the social exclusion experiences of long-term unemployed youth. Moreover, there are a few comparative studies on the moderating role of social inequality, education policies, labour market conditions, and institutions in aggravating or mitigating the job insecurity effect Högberg et al, 2019aTäht et al, 2020).…”

Labor market dualism and the heterogeneous wage gap for temporary employment: a multilevel study across 30 countries

“…Temporary jobs among primeage workers are more often used as a buffer stock in the secondary segment offering limited career opportunities and potentially acting as a signal of failure (Mooi-Reci and Wooden, 2017). In contrast, temporary jobs often act as a screening device for younger workers due to their limited work experience, which should induce only small wage penalties (Ho ¨gberg et al, 2019). Moreover, younger permanent workers are still in the early phase of their career, which puts them into weaker bargaining positions and limits opportunities to fully amortize their investments into firm-specific capital in terms of higher wages.…”