A multichannel typology of temporary employment careers in the Netherlands: Identifying traps and stepping stones in terms of employment and income security

Abstract

In this paper, we apply multichannel sequence analysis of labour market positions and incomes to create a typology of careers starting with temporary employment in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we use detailed register data from Statistics Netherlands for all workers who entered temporary employment in 2007 and were observed for 96 months. This approach leads to a typology of 17 different career types that shows a considerably larger variation - in terms of employment and income security - than previous research has shown. Specifically, the typology shows that 29.6% of the research population has a stepping stone career with high career and income security, while 39.7% has a dead-end career with low career and income security. However, a large part of careers – 24.7% – cannot be classified in this traditional distinction, as they combine high employment security and low incomes or high incomes and low employment security.