Young People and Entry Paths to Long-term Jobs in France and Great Britain

The economies of most western industrial countries are characterised by a large proportion of long-term jobs and long-tenure occupations. In the first case, the long-term jobs are usually in enterprise internal labour markets, and in the second, the long-term relationship generally resides in the workers’ ability to exercise the same skill in similar jobs in many different firms. In Britain, Main (1982) estimated that in 1968 the average completed job tenure of full-time adult males was 20 years, and that three-fifths of the workers in this group were in jobs which would last at least 10 years. Despite the impression of high labour mobility in the US, long-term jobs represent a similar proportion of those available (Hall, 1982).2 Akerlof and Main’s (1981) estimates for the US confirm these figures for males, and show that for women the comparable figure was only about a quarter lower. Akerlof and Main (1981, for the US), and Main (1981, for the UK), show that there are indeed many short-duration jobs in the economy, but that these are concentrated on a minority of the labour force who hold such jobs in succession. Apart from minority groups, young workers represent an important group holding such jobs (Osterman, 1980). Similar studies do not appear to have been done for France, but comparisons between Britain and France of current length of service and turnover in the 1970s and 1980s suggest that in France the prevalence of long-term jobs may be even more pronounced (Eyraud, Marsden and Silvestre, 1990).3