In a follow-up to former studies on the resilience of the long-term job in Europe, the present study asks whether, on average, long tenure of a country’s workforce is good or bad for productivity growth. While there is concern that high average tenure indicates a “rigid” labour market with low adjustment capacity to structural change and with an assumed detrimental effect on productivity, the findings do not support such a hypothesis, at least not for the countries and the period analysed. The relationship between tenure and productivity for the period 1992 to 2002 shows that at an aggregate level, tenure has a positive effect on productivity for about 14 years and levels off thereafter. Overall, it seems that countries remain productive with a high share of long-tenured workers. While long tenure seems to be good for productivity, it might be less positive for the labour markets within Europe, as the more flexible labour markets are generally associated with higher employment rates. We discuss ways to overcome productivity-employment trade-offs, in particular we propose using social dialogue to institutionalize “flexibility-security.” Doing so does not only benefits individual workers and employers, but macroeconomic performance as well.
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Paper provided by International Labour Office in its series Employment strategy papers with number
2004-15.
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