Seven years of youth transition to work before and during the economic crisis in France

International audienceThe transition from school-to-work is a process structured by demand for labour, employer behaviour, public policy measures and structural employment changes. However youths experience also other temporalities, that are context related, and that take place in a given country at the beginning of their working careers. In general youths entering the labour market are overexposed to economic fluctuations (Fondeur and Minni, 2004). The aim of this paper is to identify the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis in France, by comparing the trajectories of two youth cohorts over seven years. We use labour market segmentation theory developed by Doeringer and Piore (1971). According to this theory, precarious or unstable jobs are more the fate of young people at the beginning of their transition to work. However we can wonder what happens in the time of crisis. Does this lead to more or less the same difficult transition for all workers? Or does the precarious employment remain constant for vulnerable workforces such as young people of immigrant origin (for example North African background), as suggested by the dual market theory? The advantage of this research is to use two Céreq surveys based on the same methodology, the same longitudinal data, the same observation period (seven years). The Céreq's 'Génération 2004' survey provides information on a panel of 11,791 school leavers. Looking at this cohort is pertinent as the 2008 crisis happened when the youths would be, in theory, in stable employment. We compare their trajectories with another panel of 16,040 school leavers, the 'Generation 1998' where the cyclic phenomenon was less pronounced. This paper focuses on the labour market prospects of young women and men in terms of their employment status, and also the quality of the jobs they occupy (type and length of contract, wage, working time.). The major difficulties for French youths of North African origin can be characterized by the numerous job changes and recurrent unemployment. The problems that this population faces on the labour market are not new. However they became worse during the crisis, and in different ways for women and men, as shown in the econometric models