Michael Gebel

Early career consequences of temporary employment in Germany and the UK

This article investigates the effects of temporary employment at labour market entry on subsequent individual careers, drawing on data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) from the period 1991 to 2007. The results show that German temporarily employed entrants suffer from higher initial wage penalties and risks of temporary employment cycles but that all differences compared to entrants with permanent contracts diminish after five years. The integration scenario works more effectively in the UK, where disadvantages are less pronounced and employment losses are primarily related to further education. Moreover, these tendencies vary by education groups and gender. Disadvantages of initial temporary employment are weaker for women in Germany, while gender differences in the UK apparently have less impact. Across borders, temporary contracts are associated with greater initial but vanishing wage penalties and temporary employment cycles for tertiary graduates.

Educational Expansion and its Heterogeneous Returns for Wage Workers

This paper examines the evolution of returns to education in the West German labour market over the last two decades. During this period, graduates from the period of educational expansion entered the labour market and an upgrading of the skill structure took place. In order to tackle the issues of endogeneity of schooling and its heterogeneous returns, we apply two estimation methods: Wooldridge’s (2004) approach that relies on conditional mean independence and Garen’s (1984) control function approach that requires an exclusion restriction. For the population of wage workers from the SOEP, we find that both approaches produce estimates of average returns to education that decrease until the late 1990s and increase afterwards. The gender gap in returns to education seems to vanish. Furthermore, we find that the so-called “baby boomer” cohort has the lowest average return to education in early working life. However, this effect disappears when the “baby-boomer” cohort grows older.

THE DETERMINANTS OF YOUTH TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT IN THE ENLARGED EUROPE: Do labour market institutions matter?

ABSTRACT This article uses comparative micro data from the 2004 European Union Labour Force Survey (EULFS) for 23 European countries to study the impact of labour market institutions on the youth relative temporary employment probability. We find relatively high temporary employment rates for young workers in all countries but also a large cross-country variation in this respect. The results of multi-level regression analyses confirm that neither employment protection of regular contracts nor its interaction with the level of employment protection of temporary contracts affects the young peoples relative risk. Instead, we find a positive association between collective bargaining coverage as a measure of insider–outsider cleavages and the relative temporary employment risk of young persons. These results remain robust even after controlling for macro-structural conditions, such as unemployment rate and business uncertainty.

The role of fixed-term contracts at labour market entry in Poland: stepping stones, screening devices, traps or search subsidies?

Poland has become an interesting outlier in Europe in terms of employment flexibility, with an extremely high incidence of fixed-term contracts, particularly at labour market entry. In this article, detailed retrospective data from the Polish School Leavers Survey are used to analyse the dynamics of entry and exit from fixed-term contracts. The results show that neither firm-based vocational training nor diplomas from more selective tertiary education institutions provide graduates better access to secure entry positions. Regarding exit dynamics, transition patterns from fixed-term contracts into unemployment suggest that the timing of exits often coincides with the date of becoming eligible to collect unemployment benefits. The results also imply that, in Poland, fixed-term contracts might serve employers by helping them to identify the best workers.

Is a Temporary Job Better Than Unemployment? A Cross-country Comparison Based on British, German, and Swiss Panel Data

While many previous studies on temporary work have found disadvantages for temporary workers as compared to workers with a permanent contract, this study compares temporary work to the alternative of unemployment. Specifically, this paper investigates the potential integrative power of taking up a temporary job for unemployed workers as compared to the counterfactual situation of remaining unemployed and searching for another job. Applying a dynamic propensity-score matching approach based on British, (West and East) German, and Swiss panel data during the period of 1991-2009, it is shown that taking up a temporary job increases the employment chances during the subsequent five years in (West and East) Germany and the UK. Moreover, the chances of having a permanent contract remain higher and a persistent wage premium can be found during the subsequent five years of the career. Advantages of taking up a temporary job are slightly stronger in West Germany compared to East Germany, where temporary contracts are often based on public job creation measures with limited integration potential. Neither long-run advantages nor disadvantages of taking up a temporary job can be found in the case of the flexible Swiss labour market.

Ökonomische Unsicherheit und Fertilität. Die Wirkung von Beschäftigungsunsicherheit und Arbeitslosigkeit auf die Familiengründung in Ost- und Westdeutschland Economic Insecurity and Fertility. The Effects of Job Insecurity and Unemployment on Family Formation in East and West Germany

Zusammenfassung Vor dem Hintergrund der jüngsten, teils kontroversen wissenschaftlichen Debatte zur Auswirkung ökonomischer Unsicherheit auf die Familiengründung analysieren wir in diesem Beitrag die Fertilitätskonsequenzen der zwei wohl wichtigsten Indikatoren ökonomischer Unsicherheit - befristeter Beschäftigungsverhältnisse und Arbeitslosigkeit - in Ost- und Westdeutschland. Basierend auf Daten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) der Jahre 1995-2007 können wir weder für ost- noch für westdeutsche Frauen nachweisen, dass befristete Arbeitsverhältnisse zu einem Aufschub der ersten Mutterschaft führen. Ebenfalls lassen sich keine Wirkungsunterschiede befristeter Beschäftigung nach individuellem Bildungsniveau, dem Qualifikationsgrad der beruflichen Position oder dem Wirtschaftssektor feststellen. Phasen von Arbeitslosigkeit hingegen führen sowohl in Ost- als auch in Westdeutschland zu einer Verschiebung der ersten Geburt. Allerdings unterscheiden sich die Fertilitätsmuster zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland dahingehend, dass in Westdeutschland Familiengründungen häufig dann verschoben werden, wenn der männliche Partner von Arbeitslosigkeit betroffen ist, während der Prozess der Familiengründung in Ostdeutschland weniger von der Erwerbssituation des männlichen Partners als vielmehr von der Arbeitsmarktlage der Frau betroffen zu sein scheint. Summary Against the background of recent scientific discussions about the impact of economic insecurity on family formation, we have analyzed the fertility consequences of two very important indicators of economic insecurity - limited contracts and unemployment - in East and West Germany. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (1995–2007) our results show that for women limited contracts do not lead to postponement of reproduction. Also, the effects of limited contracts do not differ across educational level, qualification level of the occupational position, or economic sector. In contrast to these results, periods of unemployment seem to increase the risk of postponement of reproduction both in East and in West Germany. However, these fertility patterns turn out to be rather different between East and West Germany: While in West Germany family formation is postponed especially when the male partner is unemployed, the process of family formation in East Germany is above all influenced by the employment situation of the woman and not so much by that of her partner.

Helpful friends? Personal contacts and job entry among youths in transformation societies

This article’s aim is to explore the role of personal contacts at the transition from school to work and compare these effects across countries with various levels of market development. Using data from school-leaver surveys for Ukraine and Croatia and applying propensity score matching, we focus on the probability of finding initial employment and the quality of this employment among those youths who adhered to personal contacts compared to those relying on formal methods of job searching. Our results reveal that personal connections yield greater economic benefits for job entry in transformation countries with more developed market structures.

Transitions to Adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa

This book offers new insights on young womens situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Adopting a life course perspective Gebel and Heyne develop a general micro-macro theoretical framework for understanding the chances and barriers young women face in their most crucial life period, namely the transition to adulthood. Drawing on large-scale individual-level longitudinal data from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, and Syria, the authors describe the incidence, timing, and characteristics of central transitions in the education system, the transition from education to work and family formation. They find that there is no standard pathway to adulthood, yet rather a great variety of individual early life courses inducing a high level of social inequality among young women. The book identifies a set of individual-level, familial, and contextual factors that hinder or pave young womens way in the different life domains and shows strong interrelationships between early life course conditions and transitions.

Quality of work and job satisfaction: comparing female part-time work in four European countries

ABSTRACT Adding to the debate on the integrative or marginalizing nature of female part-time work, this article provides a comparative analysis of the implications of female part-time work for different intrinsic job quality dimensions and job satisfaction. Drawing on national micro-data from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, our multivariate analyses show cross-national similarities in terms of lower job learning opportunities for female part-timers. We found a significantly higher incidence of repetitiveness only among Swedish female part-timers and lower degrees of task discretion among British, Dutch, and Swedish women working part-time hours. Female part-timers were either equally satisfied with their work as female full-timers or even more satisfied. This held true also after accounting for the lower intrinsic job quality of part-time work. While women working part-time hours were as affected by their job quality characteristics as were full-timers, we conclude that the shorter hours of work per se provide an important additional source of job satisfaction.

Familiäre Einkommensarmut und kindlicher Bildungserfolg

In der soziologischen Forschungstradition gilt der Zusammenhang zwischen familiarem Hintergrund, individuellem Bildungserfolg und folglich dem spateren Karriereerfolg als gesichert (Blau und Duncan 1967; Muller 1975). Dieser uber Bildung vermittelte Nexus zwischen sozialer Herkunft und spateren Lebenschancen wird als Zeichen mangelnder sozialer Mobilitat interpretiert. Empirische Analysen zu diesen Zusammenhangen des Bildungs- und Statuserwerbs operationalisieren den familiaren Hintergrund in der Regel mittels der sozialen Klassenposition oder des soziookonomischen Status der Eltern. Die Klassenbzw. Statusposition wird als zeitlich relativ konstantes Konstrukt gesehen und haufig auch als Konzeptionalisierung des permanenten Einkommens verstanden (Hauser und Warren 1997). Zudem wird angenommen, dass die Familie die passende konzeptionelle Einheit der Stratifizierungsforschung ist und die Klassenposition aller Familienmitglieder wird derjenigen des, haufig mannlichen, Familienernahrers gleichgesetzt (Erikson 1984; Erikson und Goldthorpe 1992).