Up and on or down and out? Gender, immigration and the consequences of temporary employment in Canada

What happens to temporary workers when their jobs end? Is temporary employment a fleeting way station to a better job, or does it herald an ongoing cycle of precariousness? What are the implications of temporary employment dynamics for broader patterns of inequality in labour markets? European researchers have focused increasing attention on these issues in the context of concern about the relationship between inequality and insecurity in labour markets with strong regulatory protections for insiders. However, research on the outcomes of temporary employment in the less regulated labour markets of North America remains limited. This paper draws on rich representative panel data from Statistics Canada's Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) and competing risks Cox regression to assess the outcomes and dynamics of temporary employment in this understudied context. Key contributions include more precise estimates of transitions, consideration of multiple theoretically relevant outcomes (permanent jobs; new temporary jobs; and periods of unemployment and labour force withdrawal), and situation of the effect of gender and immigration status on temporary employment transitions in the context of the dynamics of permanent jobs. Findings present a more pessimistic picture of overall temporary job outcomes than prior research but suggest that the dynamics of temporary work do not magnify inequalities of gender and immigration status.