Temporary employment in Europe: characteristics, determinants and outcomes

This paper analyses labour market outcomes of temporary workers in Europe. First, investigating if the labour market is segmented into heterogeneous clusters. Second, identifying the characteristics that are most likely to affect the contract types hold by workers Third, focusing on exits from temporary employment in some European countries with discrete-time duration models. The data come from the waves 1994-1999 of the European Household Community Panel. Estimations have been carried out separately on the sample of men and women when data availability allowed for that. Unobserved heterogeneity is found to play an important role. As a general remark, temporary workers always seem to face a wage penalty compared to those holding permanent jobs.