Mesure et utilisation des emplois instables dans les entreprises

In 2000, workers employed by their employer for less than a year contributed to 19% of the total number of hours worked in the French private sector. Besides temporary work agencies, this "unstable work" is used more often by the industries in the services sector and less often by those in the manufacturing sector. Within firms, the share of unstable work in new contracts has been decreasing since 1996, having apparently been replaced by temporary work. Firms use this type of human resources management because of its flexibility. Moreover, the use of unstable work does not have the same meaning within service and manufacturing industries. In manufacturing industries, recently hired workers seem to occupy the same kinds of jobs, whether they will stay or not within the firm thereafter. In services industries, workers who occupy an unstable job (that will last less than one year) are more productive to the firms: their contribution to the production is higher than for recently hired stable workers. This may reflect the existence in this sector of specific jobs, whose main feature would be that they have to exist for less than a year in order to the firm to adapt to infra-annual variability of its activity.