Atypical Work and Employment Continuity

Atypical employment arrangements such as agency temporary work and contracting have long been criticized as offering more precarious and unstable work than regular employment. Using data from two datasets Ð the CAEAS and the NLSY79 Ð we determine whether workers who take such jobs rather than regular employment, or the alternative of continued job search, subsequently experience greater or lesser employment continuity. Observed differences between the various working arrangements are starkest when we do not account for unobserved individual heterogeneity. Controlling for the latter, we report that the advantage of regular work over atypical work and atypical work over continued joblessness dissipates.atypical work, open-ended work, employment continuity, unemployment, inactivity

‘Atypical Work’ and Compensation

Atypical work, or alternative work arrangements in U.S. parlance, has long been criticized in popular debate as providing poorly-compensated employment. Although the early U.S. literature seemed to confirm this perception, more recent cet. par. analysis has offered a partial but somewhat more optimistic evaluation. The present paper builds on the latter body of research with a view to providing improved estimates of the effect of the full range alternative work arrangements on worker compensation. The improvements are basically two-fold. First, we account for the skewness in atypical worker earnings while retaining the Mincerian human capital earnings function. Second, we deploy additional waves of the main dataset on atypical workers (the CAEAS), while supplementing this cross-section analysis with longitudinal data from the NLSY. Our analysis covers earnings and (access to) health benefits. We report that although one group of atypical workers (contractors) seems to enjoy a wage premium, cross-section results from the CPS and NLSY for the better-known category of temporary workers point to a negative wage differential of some 6-15 percent. It emerges that much of the disparity stems from unobserved worker heterogeneity, accounting for which still supports a wage advantage for contracting work. As far as fringes are concerned, the appearance in cross section of a potentially large deficit in access to health benefits is again reduced after accounting for the permanent unobserved individual heterogeneity, although in this case the attenuation is much more modest.atypical/contingent work, alternative work arrangements, wage differentials, employer-related health insurance

Atypical Work and Employment Continuity

Atypical employment arrangements such as agency temporary work and contracting have long been criticized as offering more precarious and unstable work than regular employment. Using data from two datasets – the CAEAS and the NLSY79 – we determine whether workers who take such jobs rather than regular employment, or the alternative of continued job search, subsequently experience greater or lesser employment continuity. Observed differences between the various working arrangements are starkest when we do not account for unobserved individual heterogeneity. Controlling for the latter, we report that the advantage of regular work over atypical work and atypical work over continued joblessness dissipates.employment continuity, open-ended work, atypical work, unemployment, inactivity

Atypical Work: Who Gets It, and Where Does It Lead? Some U.S. Evidence Using the NLSY79

Atypical work arrangements have long been criticized as offering more precarious and lower paid work than regular open-ended employment. In an important paper, Booth et al. (2002) were among the first to recognize that notwithstanding their potential deficiencies, such jobs also functioned as a stepping stone to permanent work. This conclusion proved prescient and has received increasing support in Europe. In the present note, we provide a parallel analysis to Booth et al. for the United States – somewhat of a missing link in the evolving empirical literature – and obtain not dissimilar similar findings for the category of temporary workers as do they for fixed-term contract workers.atypical work, temporary jobs, contracting/consulting work, regular open-ended employment, earnings development

The Use of Alternative Work Arrangements by the Jobless : Evidence from the CAEAS/CPS

Alternative work arrangements (AWAs), such as contracting, consulting, and temporary work, have been criticized as providing only atypical, even precarious, employment. Yet they may also allow workers to locate suitable job matches. Exploiting data from all four Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangement Supplements to the Current Population Survey, we investigate the initial job-finding strategies pursued by the unemployed. Within the narrow window offered by the data, we find that unemployed workers who become reemployed are more likely to find work in AWAs than in regular, open-ended employment. When we evaluate the use of AWAs against unemployment, there is also evidence that the jobless are entering AWAs as pathways out of their initial labor market state

?Atypical Work? and Compensation

Atypical work, or alternative work arrangements in U.S. parlance, has long been criticized for providing poorly-compensated employment. Although one group of atypical workers (contractors) seems to enjoy a wage premium, our cross-section results from the CPS and NLSY for the better-known category of temporary workers point to a negative wage differential of some 7-12 percent. It emerges that much of the latter disparity stems from unobserved worker heterogeneity (accounting for which supports a wage advantage for contracting work). Turning to fringes, the appearance in cross section of a potentially large deficit in atypical worker health benefits is again reduced after accounting for permanent unobserved individual heterogeneity. But on this occasion the reduction is very modest. Further, there is now some indication that the wage advantage of contract workers partly compensates for their reduced access to such benefits

Does atypical work help the jobless? Evidence from a CAEAS/CPS cohort analysis

Atypical employment, such as temporary, on-call, and contract work, has been found disproportionately to attract the jobless. But there is no consensus in the literature as to the labour market consequences of such job choice by unemployed individuals. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we investigate the implications of the initial job-finding strategies pursued by the jobless for their short- and medium-term employment stability. At first sight, it appears that taking an offer of regular employment provides the greatest degree of employment continuity for the jobless. However, closer inspection indicates that the jobless who take up atypical employment are not only more likely to be employed one month and one year later than those who continue to search, but also to enjoy employment continuity that is no less favorable than that offered by regular, open-ended employment

Information Technology and Economic Performance: A Global Analysis

We statistically evaluate the impact that technology has on economic performance. We find that technologies such as the computer increase the productivity of an economy’s labor force and increase the per capita GDP. We find it is developing, not industrialized, economies that most benefit from information technology

Atypical work: who gets it, and where does it lead? ; some U.S. evidence using the NLSY79

Atypical work arrangements have long been criticized as offering more precarious and lower paid work than regular open-ended employment. In an important paper, Booth et al. (2002) were among the first to recognize that notwithstanding their potential deficiencies, such jobs also functioned as a stepping stone to permanent work. This conclusion proved prescient and has received increasing support in Europe. In the present note, we provide a parallel analysis to Booth et al. for the United States - somewhat of a missing link in the evolving empirical literature - and obtain not dissimilar similar findings for the category of temporary workers as do they for fixed-term contract workers