Up and on or down and out? Gender, immigration and the consequences of temporary employment in Canada

What happens to temporary workers when their jobs end? Is temporary employment a fleeting way station to a better job, or does it herald an ongoing cycle of precariousness? What are the implications of temporary employment dynamics for broader patterns of inequality in labour markets? European researchers have focused increasing attention on these issues in the context of concern about the relationship between inequality and insecurity in labour markets with strong regulatory protections for insiders. However, research on the outcomes of temporary employment in the less regulated labour markets of North America remains limited. This paper draws on rich representative panel data from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) and competing risks Cox regression to assess the outcomes and dynamics of temporary employment in this understudied context. Key contributions include more precise estimates of transitions, consideration of multiple theoretically relevant outcomes (permanent jobs; new temporary jobs; and periods of unemployment and labour force withdrawal), and situation of the effect of gender and immigration status on temporary employment transitions in the context of the dynamics of permanent jobs. Findings present a more pessimistic picture of overall temporary job outcomes than prior research but suggest that the dynamics of temporary work do not magnify inequalities of gender and immigration status.     

中国流动人口的就业特征及其影响因素——与留守人口的比较研究

文章从比较研究的视角,实证分析了流入地流动人口与同时期流出地留守人口两个人群的就业特征及其影响因素。结果发现,流动人口的职业呈现出鲜明的非农化和地缘性特征,单位依附性增强,但职业地位并未提高。除了地域和个人特征变量之外,就业时间与就业渠道显著影响流动人口的职业选择;出人意料的是,尽管超过半数的留守人口有过外出务工经历,但控制其他变量之后,外出经历对于留守人口的职业选择并没有统计上显著的影响。文章对这些结论的社会意义进行了讨论。     

On the Relationship Between Atypical Work(s) and Mental Health: New Insights from the Italian Case

The new forms of atypical contracts increasingly diffused beside standard permanent full-time employment has been argued being detrimental for workers’ mental health. Despite a growing body of studies is now appearing on the topic, they generally fail to recognize that atypical workers represent a heterogeneous group. This study addresses such oversight for Italy by scrutinizing the association between four major domains of mental health—vitality, social functioning, role emotional, and general mental health—and six types of atypical contract—temporary, casual, part-time by choice permanent, part-time by choice temporary, not chosen part-time permanent, and not chosen part-time temporary. First, we find that mental health is compromised by atypical working arrangements depending on the specific atypical contract considered. Second, we verify that the choice of the atypical experience is relevant in shaping the relationship with mental health (a novelty for Italy). Third, we prove that, regardless the type of contract, variations across mental health outcomes exist. We conclude that more reflection is needed when designing studies on atypical works and their consequences on workers’ well-being.     

Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Work in Canada: Who Makes the Transition and Why?

The focus of this paper is on a microeconomic analysis of the annual transition rate from temporary to permanent work of individual workers in Canada for the period 1999–2004. Given that a large proportion of temporary employment is involuntary, an understanding of the factors associated with the transition to permanent work may inform public policy. Factors associated with the transition, namely, human capital, household structures and labour market segmentation are analyzed using data from the Statistics Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for the period 1999–2004, limited to paid workers aged 20–64 years, excluding students. Among the key factors associated with the transitions are younger age and low unemployment rates. The analysis adds to the Canadian and international literature on transitions from temporary to permanent work.

Arbeitsmarktflexibilisierung und wachsende Niedriglohnbeschäftigung in Österreich

Western societies have experienced an increasing flexibilization and deregulation of their labour markets in the last decades. These developments led to an expansion of non-standard work as well as low-paid employment. Nevertheless, there has been little systematic research on flexibilization and low-paid employment in Austria. Against this background, we discuss the growth of low-wages in Austria and analyse which social groups are especially affected by lowpaid work, using data from EU-SILC as well as ECHP for the years 1996–2010. While we find that those with better qualification tend to be better protected against low-pay risks, our results underline that employees in personal services and hospitality industry as well as non-standard workers are increasingly exposed to low-pay risks in the last 15 years.     

Temporary Work in Transnational Labor Regulation: SER-Centrism and the Risk of Exacerbating Gendered Precariousness

This article explores the transnational regulation of temporary work. Analyzing the terms of the EU Directive on Fixed-Term Work (1999), the ILO Convention on Private Employment Agencies (1997), the ILO Recommendation on the Employment Relationship (2006), and a draft EU Directive on Temporary Agency Work under negotiation, it demonstrates that these regulations hinge on the gendered norm of the standard employment relationship (SER) or the full-time permanent job complete with a social wage. They pursue labor protections designed to stretch the employment norm. To the extent that this “SER-centric” approach alleviates precariousness, it is most likely to help workers in forms of employment closely resembling the SER (i.e., fixed-term workers) and least likely to improve the situations of those that are most precarious (i.e., temporary agency workers).

Skilled temporary and permanent immigrants in the United States

The US temporary migration system is closely intertwined with the permanent system. First, this paper defines the various temporary and permanent admission categories. It presents available statistics on the occupations of temporary migrants upon admission and upon adjustment to permanent residency, especially since the Immigration Act of 1990 went into effect in 1992. There has been a sizable increase in the number of temporary workers over the past few years and those who adjust from specialty workers (H-1B) and intracompany transferee (L) have increased the overall skill composition of permanent immigrants. Secondly, the paper reviews the literature on the labor market impact of temporary migrants in academics and in the private sector. While there are marked concentrations of foreign-born workers among the college educated and especially Ph.D.s, the literature raises concerns but does not establish adverse effects (wage differentials, unemployment, etc.). There is, however, reason for some concern given trends in the postdoctoral labor market and for employersin `job shops' who undercut US workers with temporary workers.     

关于我国就业基本政策选择的几点看法

就业是民生之本,国家实行促进就业的长期战略和政策。当前我国的就业政策必须从加快经济发展,扩大就业空间;加强劳动者素质培训,提高就业能力;改变传统就业体制实现劳动力资源的市场配置;促进农村剩余劳动力转移等方面有序地解决我国的就业问题。     

The skills and autonomy of female part-time work in Britain and Sweden

Most OECD countries have experienced an increase of female part-time employment in the last decades. It has been argued that part-time work may give greater employment flexibility, enabling mothers to reconcile conflicting demands of family and work and thereby facilitating their integration into the wage economy. At the same time, it has been suggested that female part-time work implies segmentation of the labour force into a core and a periphery, with marginalized, low qualified jobs for part-time employees. However, little attention has been given to the possible mediating effect of the institutional context on potential job quality disadvantages of part-timers. We examine this question by comparing the skills and autonomy of female part-time workers in two countries, Britain and Sweden, often considered as representing quite distinct forms of institutional regime. The results show that female part-time employees in Sweden hold positions of higher skill and have more autonomy compared to their equivalents in Britain. Even so, both British and Swedish part-time employees face relative disadvantage when compared to female full-time workers. We conclude that differences in the institutional systems of Sweden and Britain do have a significant effect on the absolute skill level of part-time work. However, the relative disadvantage of part-timers persists despite Swedish policies giving greater salience to improvements in the quality of work.     

农民工就业培训调查分析

参加就业培训是农民工顺利实现非农就业的关键,调查显示:农民工受教育程度低,主要以初中、高中文化程度为主;政府部门、用人单位和农民工对就业培训的投资力度较弱,大多数农民工只能从事简单体力劳动;现有劳动力就业培训市场不规范,农民工对其表现出极大不信任;就业培训缺乏灵活性和针对性。构建以农民工、用人单位和政府部门为主体,培训机构、培训市场和就业市场相协调的就业促进型培训模式。利用这一模式,提高农民工综合素质,加大就业培训的投资力度,规范劳动力培训市场建设。     

Temporary Work and Insecurity in Britain: A Problem Solved?

Temporary workers in Britain experience lower job quality. However, the proportion of employees on temporary contracts has fallen since a decade ago to just 5.5% in 2005. There have also been qualitative improvements. Many temporary workers now fall under the protection of the Fixed Term Employees’ (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002, and the relative pay of fixed-term contract workers has since improved. In contrast, the subsequent fortunes of seasonal and casual workers with short contracts have been mixed. Furthermore, the Act excludes agency workers, and the paper calls for additional legislative action to ensure fair treatment for this group.

Bewältigungs- und Aneignungsmuster staatlich geförderter Beschäftigung bei ehemaligen Langzeitarbeitslosen

The article analyses the experiences made in publicly subsidized employment by long-term-unemployed in theoretical and empirical perspectives. The heterogeneity of the investigated population requires a differentiation between various types of personal employment histories as well as the examination of patterns of coping with subsidized employment from a differential perspective: Only a subgroup of the target-group share the notions of normality on which its construction is based. Furthermore, the wage subsidy can fulfill different functions with regard to the recipient’s personal employment history. Finally, problematic employment situations can result in the termination of a subsidized employment relationship. Since heterogeneous groups of persons can be affected by a permanent exclusion from the labour market, it seems problematic to tackle the problems connected with this situation by applying a single labour market measure.     

Individual and institutional determinants of multidimensional poverty: A European comparison

In this article we evaluate to what extent between-country differences in the probability of being ‘multidimensional’ poor can be explained by a range of ‘domain-specific’ indicators of welfare regime arrangements. To this end, a so-called micro-macro model is estimated, testing the ‘independent’ effect of institutions, as opposed to alternative explanations such as between-country differences in population composition and economic affluence. Although we conclude that institutional arrangements do influence the risk of multidimensional poverty in the expected direction, we also find that bringing the ‘economy’ back into the analyses has a non-trivial impact. Our results point at several avenues for further discussion and research. First, although the more elaborate welfare regimes generally do a better job in preventing poverty, the level of transfers is not always ‘proportional’ to the general standard of living in these countries. Second, we only find partial confirmation for the often cited ‘negative’ impact of labour market flexibility and the related equality-jobs trade-off. While stricter employment regulations do reduce the poverty risk (be it only after controlling for economic affluence), flexibility in terms of the availability of fixed-term labour seems to be preferable to unemployment, even if at the individual level, labour market flexibility increases the likelihood of being poor quite severely.

Reconciling workless measures at the individual and household level. Theory and evidence from the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain and Australia

Individual- and household-based jobless rates can offer conflicting signals about labour market performance. We outline a means of quantifying and decomposing the extent of any disparity (polarisation) between individual- and household-based measures and apply this to data from five countries over 25 years. Comparing actual household workless rates with counterfactuals based on a random distribution of employment, we find evidence of growing disparities between individual- and household-based non-employment measures in all five countries. The extent of this polarisation varies widely, but for each country, most of the discrepancies stem from within-household factors than from changing household composition.     

Regional Performance Trends in Providing Employment for Persons with Disabilities: Evidence from Italy

The aim of this work is to analyse the situation of persons with disabilities in the Italian labour market, with a view to providing guidelines to promote their inclusion both in the labour market and in society. For this purpose, we propose a two-step analysis focusing on Italian regions for the period 2006–2009. In the first phase, we use the Data Envelopment Analysis method to evaluate regional efficiency in providing employment for persons with disabilities. Cluster analysis is then applied to regional efficiency scores and economic policy variables in order to identify “policy clusters of regions”. Our results show that it is necessary both to focus on the residual work ability of persons with disabilities and to develop a social integration culture on the demand side of the labour market. Moreover, a structural reform of disability benefit systems is required in order to promote a culture of social inclusion.     

Immigration and internal mobility in Canada

We analyse the impact of temporary foreign workers (TFWs) and permanent immigrants on interprovincial mobility in Canada. Empirical results are analysed through the lens of a theoretical model that incorporates a job-matching framework in a migration model à la Harris and Todaro. The effect of the inflow of TFWs in interprovincial mobility is negative, substantial and significant. This is not the case for the inflow of permanent immigrants selected through the Canadian point system. The robustness of these empirical results to issues of endogeneity is assessed through a classical instrumentation approach as well as through a diff-in-diff analysis taking advantage of a pilot project facilitating the admission of TFWs in two Western provinces over the 2007–2010 period. Our paper suggests that, in general, the impact of immigration on labour market conditions depends critically on the way immigration policy is set.     

Ethnic Business in der Leiharbeit – Einblicke in einen wenig bekannten Arbeitsmarkt in Deutschland

Since the Agenda 2010 temporary work is even economically and politically a success story in Germany. Inside that branch you also find Ethnic Business, id est that the director of the conferrer and the employees are belonging to the same ethnic group. The recruiting strategies are most informal within the ethnic group and working for an “ethnic conferrer” oftentimes means the last chance for migrants who get no other job on the formal job market. But the temporary work-business in Germany has a bad reputation and a lot of questions are going along with Ethnic Business in that particular branch: What are the migrant’s motives for working to an ethnic conferrer? What are the attractive aspects of founding an ethnic model of temporary employment agency? Have ethnic conferrers the ability to create new stability for the migrants inside a highly unstable branch?     

The Value of an Employment-Based Green Card

The need for and role of highly skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy is fiercely debated. Proponents and opponents agree that temporary foreign workers are paid a lower wage than are natives. This lower wage partly originates from the restricted mobility of workers while on a temporary visa. In this article, we estimate the wage gain to employment-based immigrants from acquiring permanent U.S. residency. We use data from the New Immigrant Survey (2003) and implement a difference-in-difference propensity score matching estimator. We find that for employer-sponsored immigrants, the acquisition of a green card leads to an annual wage gain of about $11,860.     

Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn

Self-reported satisfaction measures respond to a great variety of socio-demographic characteristics as well as the job and living environment. In this paper we ask whether the recent financial market crisis has caused a deterioration of satisfaction not only for the unemployed but also for those out of the labour force and especially those in employment. The focus of our analyses is on the pattern of life, job and health satisfaction over time and the influence of unemployment rates, inflation rates and GDP growth. We compare the UK and Germany, two countries with different employment protection regulations and different consequences of the crisis for the labour market. For our analysis we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study for the period 1996–2010 and supplement this with annual information on macroeconomic indicators. We estimate Ordered Logit and OLS models, both with individual fixed effects. We find some limited psychological costs with respect to self-reported life satisfaction in the crisis years, and a considerable impact of regional and national unemployment rates. Looking at job and health satisfaction we get similar though somewhat weaker results.     

Temporary Employment and Social Inequality in Canada: Exploring Intersections of Gender, Race and Immigration Status

Using data from the 2002–2004 waves of Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, this article investigates the consequences of different types of temporary employment—fixed-term or contract, casual, agency and seasonal employment—for differently situated workers in Canada. Attention to intersecting social locations of gender, race and immigrant status helps capture the complex implications of temporary work for inequality. In particular, it highlights the salience of gender relations in shaping workers’ experience of insecurity in different types of temporary employment.