Neural network and segmented labour market

Basically labour market segmentation is described as compris-ing a primary and a secondary segment, differentiated mainly by job types: perma-nent in the primary segment, precarious in the secondary one. In France, for administrative reasons, unemployed workers may actually be involved in occa-sional work while remaining identified as unemployed (and receiving the corre-sponding benefit). This is due to the fact that the unemployed are deemed to be seeking full-time jobs and non-fixed term contracts of employment. This situation may be analysed as evidence of a special type of secondary segment of the labour market in a context of massive unemployment. In this paper, the authors investigate the effects of this situation both on the duration of unemployment and its recur-rence. These questions are analysed using a Kohonen network, to classify the unemployed. The data are drawn from the register of unemployed kept by the Government Employment Service (ANPE)