Overview
This series examines how employment protection legislation shapes the gap between protected open-ended work and temporary employment. It follows the rules, the worker’s path from entry through renewal and conversion, and effects on job flows, earnings, training, productivity, and inequality. It then tests enforcement, alternative work arrangements, transition support, and recent reforms. Temporary work can bridge into stability when purpose, skills, enforcement, and mobility are credible, but can become a two-tier career ladder when continuing work and adjustment risk remain concentrated on the less-protected track.
Learning outcomes
- The unemployment rate alone cannot show how employment protection redistributes hiring, separation, training, and security across contract types.
- Temporary work can be a bridge when its purpose is genuine, skills are built, and conversion or transferable mobility is credible.
- A large gap between open-ended and temporary protection can turn continuing work into a recurring buffer and weaken training.
- Recent reforms target both dismissal predictability and temporary overuse, but their effects depend on enforcement, alternatives, and transition support.
Keywords
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PlansFAQ
When do temporary contracts become a two-tier career ladder?
They become a two-tier career ladder when temporary work covers continuing needs, the protection gap is large, training and conversion are weak, and workers cannot credibly move upward.
Does stricter employment protection reduce unemployment?
Not in one clear general direction: the reviewed evidence finds no clear general relationship between employment protection legislation strictness and unemployment, although job flows and distributional effects can change.
Why can strict temporary-contract rules coexist with widespread temporary employment?
They can coexist when legal categories are ambiguous, enforcement or worker representation is weak, workers have few alternatives, or firms shift adjustment into another arrangement.
What shows whether temporary work is a stepping stone?
Renewal, conversion, training, earnings, re-employment, tenure, and movement into stable work show more than temporary-work incidence alone.
How can policy narrow the protection gap without removing flexibility?
Policy can narrow it by clarifying dismissal procedures, limiting temporary work to justified purposes and durations, extending protection across labels, and supporting income, training, and representation.