Temporary employment in Central- and Eastern Europe: individual risk patterns and institutional context

'This article uses data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EULFS) 2004 for a comparative analysis of individual and contextual determinants of temporary employment contracts in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Descriptive analyses reveal that temporary contracts are more often involuntary by nature and associated with relatively lower occupational status than permanent contracts in CEE countries compared to Western European average. Individual-level logistic regressions show that the general determinants of temporary employment are rather similar in both parts of Europe, but vary in their strength between countries. To evaluate the impact of macro-level influences on these cross-country differences in temporary employment risks, we focus on the risk of young people as one group of potential labour market outsiders. In general, young persons have a higher temporary employment risk, but their relative risk varies between countries. We use multi-level models implemented in a two-step estimation procedure and try to explain this cross-country variation with the intervening role of institutional influences under control of macro-structural conditions. Comparing CEE countries and Western European countries shows that neither employment protection of regular contracts nor its interaction with the level of employment protection of temporary contracts affects the young people's risk. Instead, we find a positive association between collective bargaining coverage as a measure of insider-outsider cleavages and the relative temporary employment risk of young persons.' (author's abstract