Flexicurity and Workers Well-Being in Europe: Is Temporary Employment Always Bad?

In this paper we study the effect of a micro-level measure of flexicurity on workers job satisfaction. To this aim, using micro data from the Eurobarometer survey, we split workers in different groups according not only to their employment contract (i.e. permanent or temporary), but also to their perceived job security, and we evaluate differences in job satisfaction between these groups. After controlling for the potential endogeneity of job type, results show that what matters for job satisfaction is not just the type of contract, but mainly the perceived job security, which may be independent of the type of contract. The combination “temporary but secure job” seems preferable with respect to the combination “permanent but insecure job”, pointing out that the length of the contract may be less relevant if the worker perceives that he/she is not at risk of becoming unemployed. Our main conclusions are robust to the use of alternative definitions of workers’ types and they generally hold within different welfare regimes and also for different aspects of job satisfaction, mainly for those more related to job security.