The dynamics of repeated temporary jobs

The path to a permanent job often implies a sequence of temporary contracts, sometimes including periods of unemployment. This has usually been disregarded in previous studies on the transition from temporary to permanent employment. To account for these transitions, I apply multiple-spell duration techniques to an Italian dataset. I find that the probability of moving from a temporary to a permanent job increases with the duration of the contract, but decreases with repeated temporary jobs and especially with interruptions. This suggests that it is not temporary employment per se but the intermittence associated with it that is detrimental to employment prospects.