Flexible employment, precarious employees? Job-, employer- and institutional explanations for numerical flexibility, and its relation to precarious employment

This dissertation presents a study of numerical flexibility and its relation to precarious employment in contemporary labour markets. Precarious employment is defined as the situation in which an employee has both insecure employment and insecure finances. More specifically, precarious employees are employees who are employed on a numerically flexible contract, while having low earnings, a high risk of unemployment and low unemployment benefit entitlements. The study addresses the relation between job characteristics and the performing employee’s risk of being employed on a numerically flexible contract. Additionally, it investigates how employers’ HRM attitudes relate to their use of numerical flexibility. Having given an account of numerical flexibility, the relation between numerical flexibility an precarious employment is explored, as well as the how characteristics of the institutional environment act upon this relation, specifically with regard to employment protection, minimum wages, collective bargaining and unemployment benefits. In the end, this dissertation aims to provide an encompassing account of precarious employment, and how institutions may serve to lessen its prevalence.