Photographs of young generations on the Dutch labour market

• Date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12139
• Published date: 01 June 2020

Copyright © The authors 2020

Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2020

International Labour Review, Vol. 159 (2020), No. 2

* Department of Labour Law and Social Policy, Tilburg University, email: s.bekker@tilburguni

versity.edu (corresponding author). ** Tilburg University, email: i.a.pop@tilburguniversity.edu.

Responsibility for opinions expressed in signed articles rests solely with their authors, and

publication does not constitute an endorsement by the ILO.

Photographs of young

generations on the Dutch

labour market

Sonja BEKKER* and Ioana POP**

Abstract. In the light of the decline of “standard” employment relationships in

many countries and its particular eect on young people, this article provides a

detailed analysis of the labour market trajectories of early-career workers in the

Netherlands between 1985 and 2014, adopting the approach of the sequence ana-

lysis of life-course events. Using two indicators for instability (entropy and turbu-

lence), the authors nd that cohorts that entered the labour market after 2000,

and particularly in 2008, experience greater employment status instability despite

the exicurity policies applied. Transitions into stable employment are the excep-

tion rather than the rule.

Keywords: youth employment, labour market exibility, labour market

instability, labour market transitions, life course approach, Netherlands.

1. Introduction

A decline of “standard” employment relationships has been witnessed in many

European Union countries (Eurofound, 2018). Increasingly fewer people have a

full-time, open-ended employment contract that lasts a lifetime (Schmid, 2010;

Kalleberg, 2011). Young people, in particular, face labour market integration

diculties, staying in unemployment or non-standard forms of employment

for longer (Ayllón and Ramos, 2019; de Lange, Gesthuizen and Wolbers, 2014;

Brzinsky-Fay, 2007 ). In the light of these developments, there has been a move

to understand more about the variety of new workplace arrangements and their

implications, including for individuals’ well-being (Kalleberg, 2011). To date,

there is little comprehensive insight into the full range of labour market transi-

tions that people make, including job-to-job transitions (Berloa et al., 2015 and

2016; Schmid, 2010). In particular, detailed and longitudinal analyses of tran-

sition sequences over the course of individuals’ lives could contribute to our

understanding of this subject. They could also reveal where the risks of making

exclusionary transitions into the labour market lie, or, alternatively, where in-

tegrative transitions are made (Schmid, 2010).

International Labour Review

196

To map out young people’s transitions, this article adopts the methodological

approach that is widely used in the literature on sequence analysis of life-course

events (Bras, Liefbroer and Elzinga, 2010). It seeks to answer the following ques-

tion: what are the standard labour market trajectories of early-career workers

in the Netherlands over the period 1985 –2014? The study is set in the Dutch

regulatory context, where important changes in regulations on both xed-term

employment and protection against dismissals were made in 2000 , 2006 and

2015. Such changes often come about in reaction to labour market demands

and trends, with the most recent Balanced Labour Market Act, 2020, attempt-

ing to limit the negative eects of non-standard work and stimulating employers

to oer standard employment. The Netherlands has often been described as a

model of exicurity, referring to regulations aiming to normalize “ex work”

– particularly referring to xed-term employment contracts and temporary

agency work – by combining exibility with security (Bekker and Mailand, 2019;

Bovenberg, Wilthagen and Bekker, 2008).

Moreover, taking a period during which Dutch regulations underwent

changes allows us to judge whether there are systematic dierences in the la-

bour market trajectories of individuals that enter the labour market at certain

times. Our data come from a prospective Dutch data set, which has collected la-

bour market supply-side information every two years from 1985 until the last

wave in 2016 (for the purposes of our study, we used data for the waves up to

2014). We followed 12 cohorts that nished formal education and presumably

entered the labour market between 198 5–86 and 20 08, each for a period of six

years. We conclude that the Dutch labour market has become much more ex-

ible and that the generations that have been owing into it since 2000, and in

particular since 2008 , experience greater employment status “turbulence”. Tran-

sitions into stable employment are the exception rather than the rule, even after

six years on the labour market.

Accordingly, the remainder of this article is organized as follows. The sec-

ond section sets out the conceptual framework of our study, providing a review

of the literature on labour market exibilization and of interdisciplinary ap-

proaches in particular. In the third, the Netherlands is presented as a case study

in this regard. The fourth section presents our data and methods, while the fth

describes our analytical strategy. Our results are outlined in the sixth section,

while the seventh presents the conclusions that we draw from these. The last

section discusses policy implications.

2. Conceptual framework

2.1.  Literature review on labour market exibilization

The theory of transitional labour markets posits that people may make several

transitions in relation to the labour market, moving from one labour market sta-

tus to another. These are transitions from education to employment, from one

job to another, from unemployment to employment, from private activities or

inactivity to gainful work and, lastly, from employment to retirement (Schmid,

1998 and 20 15). These transitions and corresponding roles are not exclusive,