Abstract

We analyse how substantial deregulations of the temporary help sector in Germany influenced job satisfaction of male temporary agency workers. While contract regulations were changed for temporary workers, they stayed the same for permanent workers. We assume that this yielded a decrease in job satisfaction of temps compared to the one of perms. We employ matching and a difference-in-difference design to isolate the causal effect of the reform on job satisfaction of agency workers using survey panel data. The results show that job satisfaction decreased for temps which we attribute to a decrease in wages and an increase in perceived job insecurity after the reform.