How can young people's employment quality be asserted dynamically?

This chapter highlights the importance of studying various aspects of youth labor market performance from a dynamic perspective. Given that labor markets are increasingly characterized by workers moving quite frequently between jobs, with possible unemployment spells in between, we argue that it is important to go beyond (or to complement) the analysis of jobs’ characteristics and to develop new concepts of employment security and employment quality that account for various features of individuals’ employment conditions over a certain period of time. Our definition of employment quality encompasses four dimensions: employment security, income security, income success, and a successful match between education and occupation, which are identified using information pertaining to a 2- year period. We also present a new methodology with which to analyze employment status trajectories, based on whether they contain a prespecified major outcome and some other minor features that are relevant for the research question being addressed. We apply this approach for the analysis of young Europeans’ labor market experience during the period 2006– 2012. We examine two phases of youth working life: entry into the labor market (i.e., the transition from school to the first relevant employment experience) and the subsequent phase, approximately 5 years after leaving full- time education. For the first phase, we analyze the type and the determinants of employment status trajectories followed in the first 3 years after education exit. For the second phase, we focus on young people’s probability of achieving a secure employment condition (employment security and income security) and a successful employment condition (income success and a successful match between education and occupation). For those who were not able to achieve these outcomes, we examine their employment pathway.