Employers, Young adults and Flexible employment: knowledge gaps and a theoretical lens to further research

Lin Rouvroye , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI-KNAW)

Growing up was never easy, but in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world it seems particularly difficult. On the road towards adulthood, young people in Western countries face a multitude of risks, such as rising education costs, affordable housing shortages and encroaching loneliness. Young adults therefore need to demonstrate resilience to navigate their way through these insecurities. Getting a job and earning one’s own money is seen as an important step in becoming a proper adult. However, over the past few decades, many Western countries have witnessed a substantial increase in labour market flexibility. This means employment is no longer necessarily secure. In light of these structural changes in the world of work and their implications for the lives of young adults, demographers need to better understand how people in the 18-35 year old age bracket and their employers relate flexible employment to the transition to adulthood and how both parties perceive disadvantageous consequences of flexible employment. This perspective piece identifies knowledge gaps in the literature on flexible employment, younger people and the transition to adulthood. It then proposes an interdisciplinary theoretical lens to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic between labour markets (macro-level), employer behaviour (meso-level) and demographic outcomes in the lives of young adults (micro-level). To conclude, the piece discusses research angles that might deserve further exploration in the future.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History