Non-Standard Employment in a Comparative Perspective

In March 2012, IZA hosted a workshop bringing together about 20 experts on non-standard forms of employment in European countries and the United States. The workshop was the first one related to a forthcoming volume co-edited by Werner Eichhorst, Deputy Director of Labor at IZA, and Paul Marx (University of Southern Denmark and IZA). At the workshop both draft country chapters and drafts of comparative studies were discussed. Following an introductory presentation by the editors, who are also responsible for the German case study, country chapters on the Netherlands (Trudie Schils, University of Maastricht and Anne Gielen, Erasmus University Rotterdam and IZA), Spain (Oscar Molina, Universitat Autonoma Barcelona), the United States (Moira Nelson, Free University of Amsterdam), the United Kingdom (Alison Koslowski and Caitlin MacLean, University of Edinburgh), Denmark (Per Kongshoj Madsen, University of Aalborg and IZA) and Italy (Stefano Sacchi, University of Milan, Fabio Berton, University of Eastern Piedmont, and Matteo Richiardi, University of Turin) were discussed on the first day. The volume will also comprise country chapters on Sweden (Ola Sjöberg, Swedish Institute for Social Research) and France (Angela Luci, University Paris I and IZA).

The second day of the workshop was devoted to the comparative chapters addressing labor market mobility (Ruud Muffels, University of Tilburg), subjective labor market insecurity (Heejung Chung, University of Kent), the household composition and labor supply to non-standard jobs (Laura Romeu Gordo, German Center of Gerontology, Martina Dieckhoff, EUI, Vanessa Gash, University of Manchester, and Antje Mertens, Berlin School of Economics and Law), female employment and public/private sector divide (Janine Leschke, European Trade Union Institute and IZA) and skill formation and vocational training (Marius Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, and Kathleen Thelen, MIT). Furthermore, there will be a cross-country chapter on industrial relations by Maarten Keune (University of Amsterdam).

By now, it is commonly accepted that labor markets in advanced societies are in a process of deep transformation. The general trend seems to be one of increasing flexibility with regard to wages and/or employment contracts. This is most apparent for those European labor markets which were seen as quite egalitarian only one or two decades ago. The overall research question of the book project is to explain this change from a rather standardized employment model (stable employment relationships, permanent contracts, wage compression) to a more de-standardized one (flexible employment relationship, temporary contracts, wage dispersion). In addressing this question one particular issue lies at the core: the occupational heterogeneity in the process of labor market change. In the comparative labor market literature, the growth of non-standard employment such as fixed-term contracts, agency work, freelance and part-time work as well as increased wage dispersion is usually discussed referring to the development of national averages over time. Moreover, these developments are seen as being related to changes in public policies, in particular labor market deregulation. This dominant approach focusing on national data tends to neglect the crucial dimension of sectoral and occupational differences in employment flexibility. Some service sector jobs exhibit work logics and skill patterns that are fundamentally different from manufacturing. Many occupations thus vary dramatically regarding both the share of low-pay and the share of ‘atypical’ workers.

The ambition of the planned volume is not only to describe labor market patterns, but also to understand the underlying causes for cross-country variation. The literature offers various explanations such as globalization and stronger labor cost competition, deindustrialization and the cost disease in private services, skill-biased technological change and declining demand for low-skilled jobs, and reform trajectories increasing labor market flexibility (in particular at the margin). Each of these trends leads to pressure for employers and job seekers to defect from the traditional institutions forming the “standard employment relationship”. On the aggregate level, the combined outcome is a growing share of atypical contracts, freelance, low-paid work, etc. What is less clear, however, is the question how the process of labor market change is structured on the horizontal dimension, i.e. across sectors and occupations on similar skill levels. Atypical work is not a phenomenon restricted to low-skilled workers, but affects high-skilled workers as well. This, in turn, does not necessarily hold for all segments of the labor market. Drawing on different strands of literature, various causal hypotheses concerning the dividing lines are tested. Potential explanatory variables regarding the prevalence of non-standard jobs in occupational labor markets are the conditions of supply and demand on occupational labor markets with respect to the skill levels and the specificity of skills as well as industrial relations and public legislation (or collective agreements) influencing the availability of non-standard employment options.

These factors are examined empirically both in individual country case studies combining descriptive and analytical statistics as well as occupational case studies on the one hand and a number of selected cross-country papers addressing particular issues such as skill formation, industrial relation or labor market mobility in a comparative manner. A follow-up workshop is planned for spring 2013. The volume is to be released in fall 2013.