Temporary help agencies and workers' occupational mobility

Abstract

This paper focuses on the occupational mobility of temporary help agency workers by studying their job-to-job upgrading chances as opposed to those who have not been hired through these intermediaries. A screening approach to the role of those labor ‘brokers’ suggests that agency workers may expect greater chances of upgrading from one occupation to another. Results obtained with a sample of Spanish workers show that working through those intermediaries comparatively offers stronger prospects of occupational upgrading for workers of a medium qualification level. This basic result is reinforced when the existence of self-selection into this type of intermediated work is appropriately taken into account.Temporary help agencies, screening, self-selection, switching models