Employment mobility and labour market flexibility in the EU

Vassilis Monastiriotis () and Stelios Sakkas

No 2021-01, JRC Working Papers on Territorial Modelling and Analysis from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: Does employment flexibility facilitate cross-regional adjustments via labour mobility? Or is it instead a hinderance to cross-regional equilibration in the labour market? We examine this, drawing on a sample of 11 European countries belonging to different 'varieties' of European capitalism. We identify two opposing potential effects of employment flexibility on outmigration (a negative necessitating effect and a positive facilitating effect) and provide original evidence on the ways in which employment flexibility impacts of the responsiveness of inter-regional outmigration to regional unemployment. We find that employment flexibility is at large associated with less cross-regional adjustability. This is especially so for numerical aspects of flexibility (non-standard forms of employment contracts) and more true for countries in the European south and Scandinavia; while for internal aspects of employment flexibility (irregular hours and patterns of work), as well as for countries of the Continental 'variety' (coordinated market economies), employment flexibility appears to be more synergetic to cross-regional adjustability (via outmigration). We draw implications for our understanding of cross-regional equilibration and for labour market and wider EU policies.

Keywords: Employment flexibility; regional migration; labour market adjustment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J08 J61 R11 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-geo, nep-lab and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ipt:termod:202101

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