Wandel der Erwerbsformenstruktur - Alte und neue Trends

"Based on data from the German Labour Force Survey provided by the Federal Statistical Office, this article examines recent trends in various forms of employment (e.g. self-employment, full-time employment, part-time employment or temporary employment) and shows whether and to what extent earlier trends have continued, whether and to what extent sectoral or sociodemographic characteristics of the forms of employment have changed over time and what more recent developments can be observed. Flexible or non-standard forms of employment fulfill many functions. On the company side, they serve to increase the flexibility of personnel deployment, and, on the employee side, they can accommodate work and life preferences, such as the compatibility of family and work. The share of so-called standard employment relationships in the labor force, i.e. permanent full-time or near-full-time jobs outside the temporary agency sector, hardly changed quantitatively between 1991 and 2019, with values around 45 percent. After a decline in the 1990s and the 2000s, the standard employment relationship regained some importance in the 2010s. By contrast, if we look at the forms of employment that deviate from it, they show a clear upward trend since 1991. In purely arithmetical terms, their growth was mainly fed by a decline in labor market inactivity. Comparing the development of full-time employment or employment close to full-time with that of part-time employment and marginal employment, a clear picture emerges over the last three decades. The forms of employment with shorter working hours have clearly gained in importance. Looking at the last ten years, the trend is no longer quite so clear. Full-time or near-full-time employment remained relatively constant between 2009 and 2019, while part-time employment continued to increase and marginal employment declined. It is noticeable that the latter lost ground especially since 2015 – i.e. with and after the introduction of the statutory minimum wage. In the longer term, fixed-term contracts and temporary agency work have increased. However, fixed-term contracts lost some of its importance during the labor market upswing in the last decade, while the trend in temporary agency work continued to be upward, but with marked ups and downs depending on the particular economic situation. What both forms of employment have in common is that they came under pressure during the Corona crisis. Apart from part-time employment, this also applies to the other forms of employment deviating from the standard employment relationship, especially in the first year of the pandemic. The number of self-employed persons (excluding family workers) has tended to increase over the past three decades. Their share of the labor force rose from 8.0 to 9.1 percent. However, the increase was mainly in the period up to 2009, since when it declined. The employment share of the "self-employed with employees" was relatively stable in the longer term, declining by only 0.2 percentage points from 4.4 to 4.2 percent between 1991 and 2019. The share of solo self-employed increased comparatively strongly by 1.3 percentage points from 3.6 to 4.9 percent during this period. A whole range of factors are likely to shape further developments, some of which are counteracting each other. They range from changes in economic structure, to shifts in individual preferences and personnel policies and in market power between firms and employees, to institutional reforms. The fact is that the composition of forms of employment became increasingly heterogeneous until the mid-1990s. Since then, however, this trend has not continued at the same pace. On the contrary, recently there has been a certain stability and even a slight recovery of what was long considered as "standard" or “normal”. A comparatively high level of heterogeneity in the structural composition of forms of employment is likely to persist in the foreseeable future. At the same time, individual employment biographies might be more strongly characterized by varying forms of employment in the future. For certain phases of working life, different forms of employment could emerge more strongly than in the past, also because more and more people with sought-after qualifications are gaining market power and are thus able to realize their wishes and needs more easily." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))