Temporary work: trends and patterns of utilisation

Abstract

"The article analyses the expansion of the supply of workers by temporary employment agencies in the Federal Republic of Germany up until 1995. An empirical section contains an evaluation of information regarding the structures of the three parties involved, the agency workers, the temporary employment businesses (lessors) and the companies to which the workers are supplied (lessees). The empirical findings are based on the statistics of the temporary employment business as well as on stock and flow data of the employment statistics, and an IAB enterprise survey. In the analytical section the patterns of utilisation are examined from the point of view of the three parties involved. From this, conclusions can be drawn with regard to the legal regulations of the supply of temporary workers and to the position of temporary work compared with other methods of increasing labour flexibility.The key results are: ┐ Temporary workers are predominantly younger men with below-average earnings who are hired out to the industrial sector. ┐ The expansion of the supply of workers by temporary employment agencies is sustained by the increased supply of people with low qualifications. ┐ The lessor companies take advantage of wage differentials by employing workers recruited from the non-active population, from the unemployed or from low-wage sectors and supplying these to medium-sized and large firms with high average wages. ┐ In the companies' ranking of instruments for labour flexibility, the hiring of temporary agency workers comes after overtime and own recruitments. The use of temporary agency workers runs complementary to overtime and the recruitment of temporary staff by the companies themselves. ┐ The supply of workers by temporary employment agencies does not generally lead to stable employment relationships in the lessor companies. The extension of the maximum periods allowed by law for the supply of temporary workers has hardly changed this. ┐ For some of the agency workers temporary work provides a bridge into better paid employment in 'normal' employment relationships" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Rudolph, H. & Schröder, E. (1997): Arbeitnehmerüberlassung: Trends und Einsatzlogik. In: Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Vol. 30, No. 1, p. 102-126.