Stepping-stone effect of atypical jobs: Could the least employable reap the most benefits?

This article estimates the causal impact of atypical work on the probability of …nding regular, durable employment and on wage gains. Using a novel administrative dataset on the employment and unemployment history of 1/25th of French workers and the timing-of-events approach, we …nd a robust stepping-stone e¤ect and no evidence of a lock-in e¤ect. Starting atypical work during unemployment raises the likelihood of …nding regular work by 87% in the following months, and has no e¤ect on wage growth. Interestingly, this e¤ect is stronger for workers with weaker ties with the labor market, such as those unemployed for a long period, older individuals or those who worked fewer hours in the year prior to the start of the spell. We are grateful to the Co-Editor, Carlos Carillo Tudela, and three anonymous referees for comments that greatly improved the paper. We also thank Paul Beaudry, Pierre Cahuc and Rafael Lalive, as well as many conference and seminar participants for constructive comments. We acknowledge the …nancial support of Pôle Emploi. Finally, this work is supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the “Investissements d’Avenir” program (reference: ANR-10-EQPX-17 -Centre d’accès sécurisé aux données (CASD). yCREST-Ensai and ULCO zToulouse School of Economics