Temporary work contracts and female labour market outcomes

Little is known about the effects of being a temporary contract holder on young workers’ subsequent labour market and family outcomes. This column provides insight into this question by studying a unique set of natural experiments in the Japanese airline industry, which changed the nature of the contract for flight attendants in the mid-1990s and then again in the mid-2010s. The authors find that workers starting on temporary contracts were less likely to remain with the firm over time and were significantly less likely to have children within ten years of starting the job.