Career pathways for temporary workers: exploring heterogeneous mobility dynamics with sequence analysis

Area of Science:

• Socioeconomic studies
• Labor economics
• Sociology of work

Background:

• Temporary employment's impact on economic security is complex, extending beyond current job characteristics.
• Previous research often analyzed single job transitions, which may oversimplify temporary workers' career paths.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the long-term employment mobility patterns of temporary workers.
• To develop a typology of worker trajectories and assess their economic precariousness.
• To identify factors influencing these mobility patterns.

Main Methods:

• Utilized sequence analysis to track month-by-month employment states over five years for a representative sample.
• Derived a typology of employment trajectories.
• Employed multinomial logit models to examine associated worker, job, and employer characteristics.

Main Results:

• Identified diverse employment trajectories among temporary workers, some aligning with prior research and others revealing new patterns.
• Assessed the precariousness of different pathways based on employment stability and wage dynamics.
• Found that age, gender, and the type of temporary work significantly influence subsequent mobility.

Conclusions:

• The study highlights the inadequacy of single-transition analyses for understanding temporary employment.
• Sequence methods reveal a more nuanced picture of temporary workers' career paths and economic security.
• Worker demographics and job specifics are crucial determinants of long-term labor market mobility.