Part-time work at the start of the career: was the situation worsened by the crisis ?

Abstract

In this article we study the trajectories of French youths entering the labour market just after the end of formal education with a special focus on part time work. The survey “Enquete Generation” of Cereq is specially designed for that purpose since it follows during 7 years the educational and labour market status of 35000 youths who exit for the first time from the educational system. We begin by analysing the phenomenon of constrained and unconstrained part time. Then, using two longitudinal comparable databases: Generation 1998 and Generation 2004, we test the causal impact of the 2009 financial crisis on part-time work and unemployment using a Difference-In-Difference identification method. We show that part-time work increased significantly for youths who did not receive any high school education. This confirms the idea that reduction in hours of work is a possible alternative to unemployment in economic crisis periods. In a third step, we question the impact of part-time work episodes on longer run perspectives. In particular, we wonder whether the increase in part-time work has a positive or negative impact on youths’ future employability. To achieve this aim, we test the state dependency of the part-time status on following labour market episodes. This test is implemented using the non-linear panel data estimator from Honoré and Kyriazidou (2000) that allows to identify these effects in presence of varying covariates as well as individual fixed effects. coécrit avec Xavier Joutard (GATE, Université de Lyon 2), je suis pour ma part (CEREQ, Université de Cergy-Pontoise-THEMA)