Temporary agency employment: A supplement to regular jobs – under certain circumstances

In countries with strict employment protection legislation, firms may seek to replace regular by atypical jobs in order to cut wages or to become more flexible. In Germany, the number of unprotected temporary jobs is comparatively low. During the past decades, temporary agency employment, however, has increased considerably and the share of agency workers is now above the EU average. Using German establishment data, the analysis draws on longitudinal (generalized method of moments) and cross-sectional (matching and difference in differences) methods to evaluate whether agency workers replaced or supplemented regular workers during and after the Great Recession of 2008/2009. The study finds that hiring (more) agency workers made it possible for user firms among Germany’s core manufacturing industries to employ a larger number of regular workers at the same time. In specific sectors and regions, temp agencies therefore provided an alternative to government-sponsored instruments such as short-time work schemes. Obviously, from the view of workers, many disadvantages remain, even more so as it is rare for temp spells to offer a stepping stone into regular employment.