Kumulative Dissertation, Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, 2023

This cumulative thesis contributes to the investigation of the wage and wealth consequences of temporary employment in and outside of Europe by answering three more specific research questions in four articles. These are all motivated by recent large-scale global trends such as globalization and technological change, which have increased labor market uncertainties over the last few decades. The first specific research question asks what the cross-sectional wage consequences of temporary employment are and how universal they are across different labor market settings and worker subgroups. The second specific research question regards the longer-term wage consequences of temporary employment and investigates possible heterogeneities in these longer-term consequences between subgroups of workers and labor market settings. Finally, the third specific research question considers what the longer-term consequences in terms of wealth accumulation beyond wages of experiences of temporary employment are and how they are mediated by wage consequences. These questions are addressed in an overview article as well as four articles, two of which are published in SSCI-listed journals.

In Article 1, my co-author and I pose four research questions which contribute to the answering of the first specific research question of this thesis concerning the heterogeneous cross-sectional wage disadvantages for temporary workers. Specifically, the research questions of Article 1 ask: First, how much do cross-sectional wage disadvantages for temporary workers vary across a diverse set of countries in and outside of Europe? Second, are there consistent subgroup heterogeneities across countries? Third, how do country-level measures of labor market dualization and segmentation amplify or diminish wage disadvantage for temporary workers? Fourth, does the moderating impact of the labor market setting vary across different worker subgroups? We address these questions estimating two-step multilevel models using supplemented data from the Luxembourg Income Study for 30 countries across the globe covering a period from 2000 to 2019.

In Article 2, I put forward three research questions which contribute to the answering of the second specific research question of this thesis concerning the heterogeneous longer-term wage disadvantages for temporary workers. Specifically, the research questions of Article 2 ask: First, do former temporary workers who are able to transition to lasting permanent jobs suffer cumulative wage disadvantages compared to workers with continuous permanent careers? Second, how do cumulative wage gaps develop over the first ten years of workers’ careers? Third, are there differences in cumulative wage gaps across worker subgroups? To investigate these research questions I utilize data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP, 1994-2017) and combine sequence analysis with propensity score matching (PSM).

In Article 3, I formulate three research questions which also contribute to the answering of the second specific research question of this thesis concerning the heterogeneous longer-term wage disadvantages for temporary workers. Specifically, the research questions of Article 3 ask: First, do former temporary workers who are able to obtain a permanent job with the same employer benefit from compensating wage growth whereas those who have to change employers suffer from stigmatization? Second, do the wage growth consequences of the different transitions vary between flexible and rigid labor markets? Third, do the wage growth consequences of the different transitions vary across worker subgroups? To investigate these research questions, I again employ data from the SOEP (1995-2019). Additionally, the article relies on data from the British Household Panel Study (1992-2008) and its’ successor the Household Longitudinal Study (2009-2020), which are both highly comparative to the SOEP. To exploit the longitudinal nature of the data sets, I apply fixed effects individual slope (FEIS) regression.

In Article 4, my co-author and I pose three research questions which contribute to the answering of the third specific research question of this thesis concerning the longer-term wealth consequences of experiences of temporary employment beyond wages and how they are mediated by wage consequences. Specifically, the research questions of Article 4 ask: First, how does early career insecurity experienced by couples affect the likelihood to be homeowners in the later career? Second, how does early career insecurity experienced by couples affect the share of income that has to be spent on rent in the later career? Third, does couples’ cumulative income explain these effects? To test these research questions, my co-author and I again rely on data of the SOEP (1995-2018). We utilize an innovative combination of multichannel sequence analysis and regression analysis to reveal patterns of early career insecurity measured over seven years, which we then use to predict housing outcomes in the later career. Specifically, we estimate linear regression for the share of income spent on rent and obtain average marginal effects (AMEs) from logistic regression for homeownership.