Temporary Help Agencies and the Advancement Prospects of Low Earners

Fredrik Andersson (), Harry Holzer and Julia Lane

No 13434, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In this paper we use a very large matched database on firms and employees to analyze the use of temporary agencies by low earners, and to estimate the impact of temp employment on subsequent employment outcomes for these workers. Our results show that, while temp workers have lower earnings than others while working at these agencies, their subsequent earnings are often higher - but only if they manage to gain stable work with other employers. Furthermore, the positive effects seem mostly to occur because those working for temp agencies subsequently gain access to higher-wage firms than do comparable low earners who do not work for temps. The positive effects we find seem to persist for up to six years beyond the period during which the temp employment occurred.

JEL-codes: J31 J6 J62 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published as Temporary Help Agencies and the Advancement Prospects of Low Earners , Fredrik Andersson, Harry J. Holzer, Julia Lane. in Studies of Labor Market Intermediation , Autor. 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13434.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Temporary Help Agencies and the Advancement Prospects of Low Earners (2009)
Working Paper: Temporary Help Agencies and the Advancement Prospects of Low Earners (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13434

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13434

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().