Abstract
In the last decades, many EU countries have registered an increasing share of temporary employment. The incidence of temporary employment in the EU has a marked age profile, and it is characterised by relevant differences by gender and education, with temporary workers more concentrated among the young, women and low-skilled workers. This increase in flexibility could produce a negative effect on workers’ perceived security and, as a result, on job satisfaction. However, the “flexicurity” approach is based on the idea that flexibility and security are not conflicting when proper labour market policies are in place. Using micro-data from the Eurobarometer survey, in this chapter, we estimate the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on overall job satisfaction by gender, age and education. Moreover, we study whether this effect changes when considering workers’ satisfaction with different aspects of the job more closely related to job security. Our results show that for all workers’ types, flexible work arrangements do not negatively affect job satisfaction if the worker perceives that he/she is not at risk of losing his/her job: temporary workers are not less satisfied than permanent ones when they feel secure. On the other hand, for some groups of workers, specifically males, older and low-educated workers, the feeling of insecurity has a negative effect on job satisfaction even when it is not combined with contractual flexibility. JEL Code: J28, J81
We are thankful to Massimiliano Mascherini and to all participants at the conferences “Qualità della vita: riflessioni, studi e ricerche in Italia”, Florence, September 2010 and “Market and Happiness. Do economic interactions crowd out civic virtues and human capabilities?” Milan, June 2011.
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Notes
- 1.
The 56.1 Eurobarometer data set contains a question that allows evaluating subjective job security (“On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is completely dissatisfied and 7 completely satisfied, how satisfied would you say you are with your job security?”). However, this formulation contains an important subjective element because the meaning of “job security” may vary from one person to another (Clark and Postel-Vinay 2009) and it refers both to the probability and the cost of job loss.
- 2.
Given the wording of the question, our empirical measure of perceived security was limited to job security rather than employment security, and the results presented in the following sections will be interpreted accordingly. Some elements of employment security, for example, in terms of the likelihood of transitions between different jobs within the firm, are also captured by this measure of security.
- 3.
Given that this classification is partly based on arbitrary choices, we have checked whether our empirical results held also after slightly changing the definitions of workers’ types, that is, using a broader definition of flexicure workers (including also temporary workers stating that they were very or quite likely to lose their jobs for reasons other than lay-off, firm closure or contract expiry) and a broader definition of permanent-at-risk workers (including those stating that they were very or quite likely to lose their jobs for “other reasons” different from retirement, job change or family duties). Results (available upon request) are unchanged.
- 4.
For a more detailed description of the POLS method, see the technical Appendix in Origo and Pagani (2009). Notice that marginal effects may be derived also from ordered probit estimates, but their number equals the number of categories of the dependent variable (which is seven in our specific case), thus making the layout of the regression tables more cumbersome.
- 5.
When panel data are available, endogeneity can be controlled for with fixed-effects estimators. However, since the data set we use is a cross section, we deal with endogeneity including time-invariant personality traits as regressors, as suggested by Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters (2004). In our previous paper, we have tested the robustness of our results also by applying a two-step procedure (see Origo and Pagani 2009).
- 6.
We also tested the robustness of our results by changing our model specification and by using a traditional ordered probit estimator. As expected, results are unchanged. All the estimates that are not reported in the following tables are available from the authors upon request.
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Origo, F., Pagani, L. (2012). Flexicurity and Workers’ Well-Being in Europe: Is Temporary Employment Always Bad?. In: Maggino, F., Nuvolati, G. (eds) Quality of life in Italy. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 48. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3898-0_13
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