Sympathy for the devil? Exploring Flexicurity Win–Win Promises

Flexicurity is the combination of more flexibility for employers and more security to workers. It is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon without a well-developed monitoring framework or a statistically consistent grouping of the indicators. This paper first proposes a conceptual framework by building upon the Wilthagen and Tros (2004) flexicurity matrix. It constructs flexicurity “drivers” by pooling together variables that are conceptually related to each other and to a specific type of flexibility or security. It then obtains statistically consistent aggregate measures for each driver and selects three drivers that represent the three corners of the Danish “golden triangle”: external numerical flexibility, employment security, and income security. It conducts an empirical analysis on the evolution of the selected flexicurity drivers over time and across EU countries and the relationship between selected flexicurity drivers and social outcomes from the Social Scoreboard of the European Pillar of Social Rights. It finds evidences of convergence on external numerical flexibility and polarization on employment and income security across the EU. It finds that higher flexibility at the onset of the crisis contributes to a reduction in the unemployment rates after the crisis while more generous welfare system contributed to reduce poverty. Employment security, however, appear to be linked to the presence of higher levels of income inequality after the crisis.JRC.I.1-Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluatio