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Stepping-stones for the unemployed: The effect of temporary jobs on the duration until regular work

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  • Zijl, Marloes

    (SEO University of Amsterdam)

  • van den Berg, Gerard J

    () (Free University Amsterdam)

  • Heyma, Arjan

    () (SEO University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

Individual labour market transitions from unemployment into temporary work are often succeeded by a transition from temporary into regular work. We investigate whether temporary work increases the transition rate to regular work. In that case, temporary work may enhance labour market efficiency. We use longitudinal survey data of individuals to estimate a multi-state duration model, applying the “timing of events” approach. To deal with selectivity, the model incorporates transitions from unemployment to temporary jobs and unobserved determinants of the transition rates. The data contain multiple spells in labour market states at the individual level. We analyse the results using novel graphical representations. The results unambiguously show that temporary jobs serve as stepping-stones towards regular employment. They shorten the duration of unemployment and they substantially increase the fraction of unemployed workers who have regular work within a few years after entry into unemployment, as compared to a situation without temporary jobs.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy in its series Working Paper Series with number 2004:19.

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Length: 32 pages
Date of creation: 01 Nov 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2004_019

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Related research

Keywords: Unemployment; fixed term contracts; temporary work; job search; duration model; treatment effect;

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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Fakta och forskning talar för bemanning – vad talar emot?
    by Henrik Bäckström in Sanning om bemanning on 2012-02-28 10:34:14
  2. Det är fasta jobb som ger bra lön, säger vänsterdebattörerna
    by Henrik Bäckström in Sanning om bemanning on 2012-02-15 14:04:22
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