Abstract

Non-standard employment (NSE) might offer employment opportunities for unemployed workers, who would not find a job otherwise and can improve their human capital while working in NSE instead of being unemployed. It thus could serve as a bridge to regular, permanent employment. However, these stepping stone effects might not occur in a segmented labour market or when the accumulated human capital is not useful for regular jobs. Using German administrative data and sequence and cluster analysis, we study the labour market trajectories of individuals becoming unemployed between 2012 and 2015 over a four-year period with a focus on NSE. In the next step the project will analyse the stepping stone function of NSE: does NSE improve chances of regular employment compared to staying in unemployment.