Flexicurity and Workers Well-Being in Europe: Is Temporary Employment Always Bad?

In the last decades, many EU countries have registered an increasing share of temporary employment. The incidence of temporary employment in the EU has a marked age profile, and it is characterised by relevant differences by gender and education, with temporary workers more concentrated among the young, women and low-skilled workers. This increase in flexibility could produce a negative effect on workers’ perceived security and, as a result, on job satisfaction. However, the “flexicurity” approach is based on the idea that flexibility and security are not conflicting when proper labour market policies are in place. Using micro-data from the Eurobarometer survey, in this chapter, we estimate the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on overall job satisfaction by gender, age and education. Moreover, we study whether this effect changes when considering workers’ satisfaction with different aspects of the job more closely related to job security. Our results show that for all workers’ types, flexible work arrangements do not negatively affect job satisfaction if the worker perceives that he/she is not at risk of losing his/her job: temporary workers are not less satisfied than permanent ones when they feel secure. On the other hand, for some groups of workers, specifically males, older and low-educated workers, the feeling of insecurity has a negative effect on job satisfaction even when it is not combined with contractual flexibility.