This thesis aims to identify characteristics of non-standard employment in Korea. There are three main research questions in this thesis.
First, I investigate the who, where, and why does non-standard employment exist in Korea. In order to do so, thi...
This thesis aims to identify characteristics of non-standard employment in Korea. There are three main research questions in this thesis.
First, I investigate the who, where, and why does non-standard employment exist in Korea. In order to do so, this paper examines whether contingent workers choose non-standard employment voluntarily..
Second, standard and nonstandard employments are compared in terms of job quality. Also, the reasons that contingent works are treated as 'bad jobs' are discussed, expecially focusing on the effects of individual characteristics, job characteristic, and unions.
Third, this dissertation presents an analysis of the transitions of atypical workers into standard employment contract, and the determinants of success or failure in such transitions.
Using the supplement data of Economically Active Population Survey, various issues on non-standard employment were analyzed. For a close investigation, random and fixed effects models for panel data were used. Particularly, period analysis using discrete time proportional hazards models were used to find out the possibilities of transitions of atypical workers into standard employment contract with the change of times.
The conclusions drawn from the empirical analysis are as follows;
First, non-standard employment is involuntarily chosen by workers in weaker labor market positions rather than voluntarily by flexible labor force.
Second, non-standard employment is closely related to labor market flexibility.
Third, unlike insider-outsider theory, unions actually reduces the existence of nonstandard work arrangements.
Fourth, even after other factors were controlled, non-standard employments strongly increases workers' exposure to bad job characteristics.
Fifth, variables such as employment insecurity, unionization, and job complexity are significantly related to increasing workers' exposure to bad job characteristics.
Sixth, non-standard employment in Korea appeared to be a trap rather than a stepping stone to standard jobs as transition rate from non-standard to standard jobs is very low.
Seventh, major factors affecting the transition to standard employments appeared to be employment security, wage disparity, and union related variables. The possibility of the transition gets stronger on the basis of the length of service. Wage disparity also has a strong influence on the transition under a ceteris paribus interpretation. However, jumping from one job to another has a relatively low effect on the transition. Therefore, job search hypothesis is rejected, and skill and experience would be considered as important factors for the transition. The insider-outsider theory was not supported for that unions are positively associated with transition from non-standard to standard employment.
As stated above, nonstandard work can better be explained through demand of labor side variables rather than supply side variables. In other words, nonstandard work may be the product of labor market flexibility. In addition, most nonstandard employment is found to be bad jobs in terms of wage, social insurance, and a paid vacation. More importantly, it's extremely hard for atypical workers to have a 'standard job'. The results of the study suggest that active policies need to be taken in order to solve the problems of insecurity caused by non-standard employment.