oa Tijdelijke banen en welzijn

Temporary jobs and well-being

Government policies in European countries have the objective of creating a flexible labour market to combat or prevent unemployment. Temporary work, however, affects well-being negatively. Our research goal is to determine how the well-being of temporary workers compares to that of unemployed workers. We compare the loss of well-being in temporary jobs to that of unemployment, and explore the causes of the differences between temporary and permanent workers. We find a significant negative effect of temporary jobs on well-being, but this effect is relatively small in comparison to the six times larger negative effect of unemployment. The negative effect of temporary jobs is caused by both the worse quality of the jobs and by job insecurity. The negative effects, however, do not reinforce but reduce each other. The bad quality of the jobs appears to be less of a problem for well-being because the job is temporary. The conclusion is that the negative effects of temporary jobs on well-being are small in comparison to those of unemployment. It is, nevertheless, noted that job insecurity leads to considerable losses of well-being.